Welcome to our web-site, which we will be continually updating, so our funders are always up to date with the work of the Foundation. 

My name is Emmanuel Nehemiah, I am an Ashoka fellow and I started the Foundation in 2002, following a career in supporting people and developing new businesses.  We are based in Kaduna State, Nigeria, 45,000 sq km of mainly rural land, which our people have yet to capitalise upon.  Education is very limited in these rural areas and therefore our people do not have the knowledge and experience needed, nor the capital required to develop profitable farms.  As a result over 70% live in abject poverty, many with no clean drinking water and even fewer with reliable power or access to IT and internet. 

Our people do, however, have an in-built desire to learn and become successful and the Foundation has been set up to enable people to realise their ambitions.  In the last few years we have sunk over 50 wells and started up over 50 cooperative societies with this objective and in November 2007, we acquired the lease of a large site for training in the centre of Kaduna State, which will be a training centre for rural communities, training them in a choice of over 20 skills.  This centre, known as the SKaRDIA Centre will also be the hub for a lot more activity, including bringing internet to villages, health information and supplies, development of international markets and Fair Trade, promoting the use of alternative power sources, as well as many other unique projects.

Earlier in April 2007, we also met up with Ben Parkinson of Social Enterprise Solutions in the UK, who was impressed with our methodologies and pledged to support us in our development strategy and with our service delivery. 

Also in November 2007, we instigated the Butterfly Project by running a Testing Day in Ikulu chiefdom, to evaluate our testing methodologies.  You can read a little more about this on our "Current Projects" page.