Foundation empowers Ikeduru women at August meeting

President of Chris Onyemaechi Care Foundation (COCAF), Mrs. Elsie Onyemaechi has given a fresh breath of life to five indigent women of Umuoziri Village, Inyishi in Ikeduru Local Government area of Imo state.

She said that the gesture of doling out N500, 000 to each of the women is part of supporting her husband’s foundation in its humanitarian and developmental services to the communities.

Speaking when she was bestowed with the honour of Osodieme title by the women of Umuoziri during the 2019 women August meeting, Mrs. Onyemaechi said that since coming into the community as a married woman, she has been exposed to seeing various degrees of hardship people, especially women pass through on regular basis.

She said that her heart melts when she sees the extreme hardship widows and the indigent pass through to ensure that their children are well-cared for and felt that she needed to complement her husband’s philanthropic gesture by putting smiles on faces of women in her immediate environment.

“My husband spends volumes of money yearly in empowering the indigent persons in the community and supporting community development through his Chris Onyemaechi Care Foundation (COCAF), but I choose to narrow my support to women in my immediate environment so as to touch more lives in a different way.

“I’m just complimenting that aspect of community development and empowerment my husband engages in, in my own little way.

“As a woman I feel it’s good to provide succour to the needy, especially widows because it is not easy to raise a good home alone. If it is difficult when the man of the home is around, then imagine when the burden is on one shoulder and a woman for that,” she said.

Mrs. Onyemaechi, who is currently studying in the United States, explained that the empowerment would come in phases in form of interest free revolving loans that would be repayable after one year to enable other women benefit.

She said that she cultivated the habit of giving soft loans as a show of love to her fellow women and to encourage them to be strong and devise means of sustaining their lives and further used the opportunity to advise women to shun giving their daughters out into early marriages as the negative implication are greater than the benefits.

According to her, the ugly implications of early marriages include Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF), which is an abnormal fistulous tract extending between the bladder (vesica) and the vagina that allows the continuous involuntary discharge of urine into the vaginal vault.