By Loveth Asogwa,
Sightsavers Nigeria on Wednesday 27th July 2022, organized a one-day media partner’s inauguration/ capacity building meeting.
They inaugurated media partners with the aim of helping in creating awareness on activities carried out by the Sightsavers Nigeria Country Office in order to show accountability, influence government and other stakeholders to partner/commit and sustain Sightsavers initiatives and finally influence behavior change in the community based on information being passed through the media.
Mr. Sunday Isiyaku, Country Director Sightsavers appreciated the media representative in attendance, said that Sightsavers wants to ensure a successful partnership with the media. He gave an overview of who Sightsavers are, their mission, vision values and objectives. He also talked about the five thematic strategies to deliver the overarching vision which is inclusive education, eye health, neglected tropical diseases, social inclusion refractive error. He said this vision brought about working on issues around disability, blindness, collaboration, support, system strengthening and mainstreaming of children and persons with disabilities.
He further talked about the key drivers of Sightsavers which is leadership/governance, supply and demands, and which their support survey shows that North East and North West have the highest number of demand and service. He said most of their works is in the north because they are the ones that needs the services more and Sightsavers do more of capacity strengthening, they do not have a direct response team rather they work with the state commission on health and the state government so that when they leave, the state can still stand and continue with the work they have started. They have worked with Kogi, Kwara, Sokoto and other states.
Adamani Williams, Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) Technical Advisor presented a work on NTD work in Nigeria. He said that Sightsavers supports several states in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Health for the elimination/ control of five NTDs. Sightsavers implemented community- based interventions through partners with FMOH and 20states MOH, four downstream partners, over 145, 000 community-based volunteers, over 19,000 teachers, 20,000 health workers and health system strengthening.
Dr. Selben Penzin talked about the eye health portfolio of Sighsavers, their strategy is improving access to services, investment is an absolute necessity, and sustainable services. Some states like Zamfara and Kaduna state have benefited in child eye health project as well as Kogi, Kwara, and Plateau inclusive eye health. Sightsavers bridges the gab between eye health services.
Esther Angulu talked about promoting disability rights and approaches of people towards disability issues, disability inclusion and reporting disability by the media, finally Esther Bature talked about the disability concept and terminologies.
Mr. Razak Adekoya engaged the participants in the open conversation on how best to strengthen the partnership between the media and Sightsavers and have a better collaboration for the purpose of helping the Sightsavers Nigeria. Some of the recommendations were building a WhatsApp group platform, more media sensitization, creating programs and jingles, content creation, intervention in both urban and rural places and finally sponsor special reports.
In conclusion all parties agreed that WhatsApp group to be created, balance all aspects of media with emphasis on earned media, reach out to journalists quarterly with content and share general content with journalists regardless of their specialty.
Media houses in attendance are Nigeria Television Authority NTA, African Independent Television AIT, News Agency of Nigeria NAN, Freedom Radio, Brothers Fm, Vision Fm, Raypower FM, Liberty Tv, This Day Newspaper, Wazobia Fm, Premium Times Newspaper, The Sun Newspaper, The Qualitative Magazine, Leadership Newspaper, News Telegraph Newspaper, The Guardian Newspaper, The Punch Newspaper, Vanguard Newspaper, Channels Tv, TVC, Daily Trust Newspaper, and Federal Radio Cooperation of Nigeria.
