Caring Causes: Pan Africa Children Advocacy Watch

I recently had a chance to interview Sylvanus Ayeni MD, president and founder of Pan Africa Children Advocacy Watch, to learn about his organization. He wrote the following piece.

Pan Africa Children Advocacy Watch (PACAW, Inc.) was started by me in response to the very poor and sometimes totally non existent facilities for education of children in many rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Although I live in USA, I am in very close contact with events in my original homeland, Nigeria and several other nations in sub-Saharan Africa.

The organization focusses on three objectives.

1. Infrastructure and Staffing for the primary schools and secondary school in the village where we currently operate.

2. Periodic Leadership Academy for the school teachers and young university graduates in the community.

3. Community Economic Empowerment Program. The purpose of the program is to help the farmers and other local entrepreneurs build their small businesses by offering very low interest loans. The goal is to strengthen the local economy so as to hopefully transfer our programs to the community and local government in the near future. This is important for these communities so as to break the cycle of dependency which, unfortunately is deeply entrenched in most of these nations. 

Our goal is to take this model to several villages/communities in Nigeria, and eventually, depending on funding, to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

I think it is gratifying and fulfilling for people in the US to support initiatives abroad, especially those involving education of children. Many of these innocent children are trapped in the decay of their environment, and in many instances with no hope at all for any escape. There are tens of millions of these children and young men and women in this predicament in sub-Saharan Africa.

 As the distances between members of the global community shrink due to the speed of air travel, the inevitable negative consequences of the destitution in the nations of sub-Saharan Africa will, sooner or later be felt across the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and the Mediterranean, Arabian and Red seas. A notable example is the spread of diseases like the recent Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa.

People can help by going to our website, www.pacaw.org and donate. They can donate online or by mail. All the information is on the website. PACAW, Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) non profit organization and donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. For any questions, people can call 301-910-2080. The e-mail address is: info@pacaw.org