Seye Joseph –
When Tony Joy, Founder of Durian, a non-governmental organisation based in Ondo state was asked when she will come to Lagos to look for job, she laughed and said that she was not looking for job and has found a course she has chosen to pursue in life.
“This is what I intend to do for the rest of my life. So help me God. A lot of people don’t pay attention to those who are in this type of margin, those who live below the poverty level, people who don’t have anyone to care for them. I’ve been there and if I have been given an opportunity to re-tell my own story, I have the obligation to help others to re-tell their own stories too”
“So this is what I want to spend my life doing, this is my work, this is what I spend my whole day doing. My office is in Imafon community, here in Ondo State. When I wake up every day in this community, I’m with them, don’t think we’re going anywhere. However, we will reach out to more communities”, she said convincingly.
So to say, she is contended with what she is doing with Durian. The NGO empowers rural communities to be self-sufficient through transforming their local waste into value.
Joy who studied English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University and have involved in different international projects said that the inevitable challenges of life she had prompted her to start her voyage in the social development space, the odd experience that made her to leave home at 17 when she lost her dad got her to experience poverty, and low self-esteem until she discovered her love for music and people like her who are seen as waste.
“I had to deal with life itself when I lost my dad. I was one of those people who grew up not having three meals to eat in a day, didn’t have clothes to wear. I was a young person above 12 years at that time. You know those people that you see and you know they’re the ones coming because they wear the same clothes every day”
“At some point in my life I didn’t have a place to stay and I basically tried to stay under a tree. That was when I was in Ife. I’ve been thrown out of houses severally times because I didn’t have money to get my own place. I’ve had to do different jobs. I was lucky to not have sold anything on the streets but I’ve had to teach in different coaching centres and I had to travel some distances to do this. At some point, I worked for a media organization. I did so many things while growing up. So it is a wild world for me, having experiences from various ends”
With her resolute courage and doggedness, Joy at age 23 stated her phase in the development space and since then has organised different clean-up exercises in over 8 states of the country, where she discovered her love for waste management.
She said the drive to keep doing something led her to Imafon, a rural community in Akure, Ondo State in 2016, where she decided to spend her time with people who are treated like waste, poor and marginalized with the initiative to empower them with skills and perspectives they need to make things out of waste.
Explaining what she has been doing in Imafon, Joy said that Durian as an organisation has been dealing with different with adult population and children where she used the program of the organisation to create fun for the children whenever they come together.
According to her, the learning is divided into various parts that will enhance their total man concept, academic and they include skill, music, dancing, learning to express their creativity.
Due to the level of poverty in the community, Joy said that most of the children don’t wear sandals to school, a responsibility she had taken upon herself through the organisation not to buy sandals for them but to creatively teach them how to make their own sandals for themselves.
“The office is within a cocoa plantation, we know how much of insects we see here every day. They also have to go to school and when they do without sandals most times, the teachers flog them for not wearing sandals that they end up not going to school.
“Basically, we teach them to make their school sandals to enhance their self-esteem, self-confidence, and to give them the drive to go to school. It’s about teaching them to do things themselves because that’s the future we want to see in communities. We want to see communities that are self-sufficient and if we want to do something for the future, we should think about the children because they are future of every community”, he explained.
In her further explanation, she said that parents have been coming to the centre to see the creativity of their children, an effort that has made them to thank her for coming up with the idea.
An initiative she described as good relief for the parents as they don’t need to buy shoes for the children anymore, being one of the burdens the poor community has.
“We get loads of prayers from parents every day. As parents pass by, they stop to pray. They also send their children down to the office as soon as possible because it’s not just about teaching them skills but we’re trying to make them leaders and better people”
When asked if the parents have been forth coming to support the organisation in one way or the other, she said that parents in the community do not have that kind of capacity to support the organisation.
“One thing we realise is the level of inter-generational illiteracy and poverty that is affecting people in this community. Talk about poverty from grandparents to parents, and from parents to children. The children grow with that same mind-set of poverty and illiteracy and then it goes to the next generation”
“This is a community where a woman makes profits of about 25 naira per day from sale of things like banana and pineapples. The profit is so small because the people who buy it can’t even afford to pay more than the cost she bought the goods herself, so if you multiply 25 Naira by 30 days that she has to sell, how will she pay school fees”, Joy asked
In line of providing support for the initiative, Joy said much of her personal fund has been expended on the project and still writing proposals to get grant support to grow different projects of the organisation.
If government at any level wants to do anything for the community, Joy called for urgent provision of school where parents don’t need to pay for tuition.
“Should it always have to be people when the government has the provision to do something”, Joy asked
“It is the responsibility of government to provide schools where children don’t have to pay for anything but it’s not there. So there’s a big gap and it’s a big call on the government to take up their own responsibilities. While we call on the government to do that we also need more people to keep talking about these failures that we see every day especially at the lowest level of everything that we see in the nation”, she called with urgent attention.
Joy disdained the idea of people always focusing on the central government while rural communities remain under-develop.
“Two communities away from the community I’m presently in don’t have electricity and most of the people there don’t know what a bulb looks like except for those who use generators in the communities. Electricity passes through the community but it doesn’t get into the community. So there’s a big gap”
In her words, “When you compare what you see in your daily life. There’s a big difference for someone who lives in the city and for someone who lives in this community and it’s like government isn’t paying attention, talking about local government representatives. I’m talking about people who represent constituencies. They don’t care”
“Even the kabiyesi of this community travels to America like one who goes to buy market to buy biscuit and come back, and in his own community he isn’t doing anything other than getting married to girls. It’s really sad”, she cried
She said the most urgent plan for the organization is to set up a vocational institute that will becomes an alternative where parents and young people can always come to learn and to create large space for the children to learn.
This he said is the most urgent problem they need to solve and not establishment of school
“We don’t even mind a situation whereby everyone sits under a tree to learn and have classes. No matter what, let us have good teachers. These teachers must be able to ensure that these people who are learning can compete with those in the city”
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