Gate - the The development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC)

There are many women's organizations in Nigeria that are involved in HIV/AIDS activities,
and many are in Abuja. Some of the women's groups are connected with faith-based organizations,
while others are more or less secular. The following illustrate a bit of the wide variety of
orientations and potentials in these groups.
Women's Health, Education and Development (WHED)
Established in Abuja: 2000 (formerly in Kano)
Executive Director, Irene Ogbogu
Address: Plot 288 Lagos Crescent. Off Samuel Ladoke Akintola Boulevard. Garki II.
Abuja.
Phone: 09 2342184, 08037864826
E-mail info@whedmogeroa.org
Publication: CHANGE April-June 2004 first issue of this multicolored newsletter.
This organization has a number of projects, and a very successful and important
activity is their training and development of sex workers as peer educators. The women (sex
workers) are trained in condom promotion, counseling for HIV testing, and other one-on-one
counseling with their peers. WHED informants told us that they had earlier trained approximately
500 sex workers in Kano, and now, more recently some 300 to 400 in Abuja. In Abuja they have
outreach activities in six locations (Idu, Apo, Mabushi, Gwagwa, Mogadishu Barracks, and Dantata
Village). Provision of condoms, and teaching the importance of condom use is a primary focus of
the peer educator system of WHED, in their various outreach locations. The organization provides
condoms to their peer educators, who then sell them and make a bit of income. WHED has a simple
form with pictures on it, onto which their peer educators (including illiterate persons) can tally their
contacts for each day of the week.
WHED originated in Kano in 1994, but moved to Abuja in the year 2000 because of the
imposition of Sharia law in Kano state. In 2002 the WHED organization was visited by President
Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, and Bill Gates Sr. They went with the WHED
workers to meet with sex workers in a dirt-floor location in Mabushi (which is a beer parlour at
night). According to the note (in CHANGE, PAGE 4) Mabushi is home to an estimated 4000
female sex workers.
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