Our vision is to establish a Skills Acquisition Centre for the less privileged in the society – Helen K. Umar

In this exclusive interview with the President of Michael Dato Relief Foundation, she bares her mind on the reasons for setting up the foundation, the challenges and the prospects of an international collaboration for the foundation in the future

Question:  What motivated you to set up the Michael Dato Relief Foundation?

Answer: I think the first motivation for me in setting up the foundation is to satisfy my passion to help people especially the less privileged in the society. It is like a gift from God for me to see to the welfare of people and I enjoy doing it. Also the level of poverty and educational decadence in our country made me look at what I can contribute to solve the problem which is part of the objective of the foundation. I want to state here that the passion for helping people is a family thing because as a family (me and my other siblings) we contribute money and other materials every month to reach out to widows, retirees, and other less privileged children around us. We have been doing this before the setting up of the foundation and we have not stopped. So all these and the need to sustain the good legacies of my late father contributed to why I decided to set up the foundation.

Question: What impact has the foundation made in this short time it has existed?

Answer: Within this short period the foundation has touched several lives. We had a medical outreach recently and a lot of men and women were ministered to especially now that we have all kinds of sicknesses and diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and the rest of them. Some medical tests were conducted for them to know their health status and free drugs given to them. Some less privileged women were also empowered with seed money to start small businesses. The youths have also benefitted from the foundation through training seminars we organized to equip them with entrepreneurship skills especially now that white-collar jobs are not available.

Question: What are some of the challenges you have encountered in running the foundation?

 Answer: The number one challenge is in the area of funding. For now it has been the family and friends that are supporting us and that has limited our ability to reach out to more people who are in need. Secondly, people find it difficult to believe what you are doing especially when you say you are running a foundation. And you don’t t blame them because a lot of people are not faithful in things like foundation so there is this lack of trust. Some will think you are raising the money for your own personal use. To the glory of God we are comfortable in our family and will not descend to such fraudulent schemes. As a foundation, we want friends and other partners in progress to trust us.

Question: Apart from the major programmes you have done so far, are there others lined up for execution, and where do you see the foundation in the next ten years?

Answer: Yes we have a lot of plans and programmes for the foundation. For instance, we have our major plan to build a skill acquisition centre for the less privileged where they can come and learn handworks like baking, fashion design, decoration etc at no cost. We also plan to have a sick-bay at the centre to take care of minor ailments like malaria, typhoid fever. We believe that in the next ten years we will be able to partner with other international Non-Governmental Organizations like the Bill Gates Foundation, Dangote Foundation and Tony Elumelu Foundation. The essence of these partnerships is to help us reach out to millions of people especially the less privileged around us.