United To Affect Humanity
THEY are parents; mothers and fathers with families they are responsible to; they are men and women who have with a large heart to share love with the motherless, the orphans and less privileged children. Having shown these special children love over the years through their orphanages and homes, founders of orphanages and homes in Nigeria came together to form an association with an objective to showing more consolidated love and care to the under privileged.
The Association of Orphanages and Home Operators in Nigeria (AOHON), has been long overdue taking into consideration the many cases of abandoned babies being recorded even with the nefarious activities of unregistered charities which are usually used for criminal purposes. Among the members of the newly formed association are Little Saints Orphanage, Heritage Homes, Living Fountain Orphanage, Bab-Es-Salam Home, Love Home Orphanage, Sought After Children Foundation, Tunji Adebayo Foundation and Arrows of God Orphanage. Others include Heart of Gold Auspices, Olive Blooms Orphanage, Hephzibah Homes, Missionaries of Charity (Mother Theresa), and the Motherless Babies Homes.
According to the President of the association, the vision for bringing all the homes and orphanages under one umbrella is for them to work together in order to achieve better results.
“We thought it had become necessary for homes and orphanages to come together and consolidate on what we have been doing respectively as organizations. This association will help conduct the affairs concerning abandoned children, homeless kids and other issues that are recurrent in our society in these areas. The association will work hand in hand with government and agencies of government to curb the issue of child trafficking as well,” she said.
Some of the issues the association is aiming at advocating and discussing with the government borders on policies on adoption, administration of orphanages and recovery of abandoned children which has become rampant recently.
“We will be discussing with the Special adviser to the Lagos State government soon and will need to advance a very good relationship with the government to achieve these objectives,” Rev. G.O Oyedeji, the secretary to the association informed.
Though a new association, AOHON is not new to the business of taking care of the less privileged and abandoned children as some of its members orphanages and homes has been around for a period of time but that is not a prerequisite for membership.
According to the association, membership requirement includes any orphanage operator to have an approval from the Cooperate Affairs Commission (CAC) as well as that of the state it operates in and also present a functional orphanage with a definite address. Any prospective member will also be willing to collect and submit membership registration form and pay annual dues to the association. Some of these will make up the content of the website the association is presently working on before its official launching which will be coming up this year.
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