FVGI empowers 63,000 in rural Nigeria

Future View Green Initiatives - FVGI
http://futureviewinitiatives.blogspot.com/
Social-Enterprise Arm of Afripharm Medicals Ltd As a Vehicular-Model to ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY,
Improve Food Security and Affordable Primary Healthcare Access Through INNOVATIVE Community Engagement
futureviewgreeninitiatives@gmail.com; irembright@gmail.com
TO LIVE UP TO THE CHALLENGES OF OUR TIME WITH EXCELLENCE, IMPACT CHANGE WE CAN
BELIEVE IN WITH HANDS OF POWER & BUILD BRIDGE OF HOPE WITH CONFIDENCE
+IREM BRIGHT CHIMEZIE, LEAD INITIATOR FVGI
Responding to a Local Press Interview in Explaining what you should know about us in FVGI
and our work in our community to make our world a better place
FVGI is founded by Bright Chimezie Irem as a response
to address basic and key social challenges in our rural
environment, critically focusing on the vulnerable and
less represented components of our demographics
(population) in South East and South-South regions of
Nigeria. After I lost close family relatives to effects of
fake/adulterated medications used in treating malaria, I
realized what the public health pandemics had done to
my community. There were over 2 million similar cases
compounded and worsened by the burden of
HIV/AIDS, lack of rural healthcare facilities and long-
term failure of the government to provide basic social services down to the bottom of the pyramid
due to long-term effect of corruption in government and the public sector. This situation led to
creation of orphans and very vulnerable/fragile children and adults amongst the burdened
community dwellers; with the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) being allowed to be
raised by their impoverished and aging mothers and grandmothers in those rural areas thereby
stretching further the tool/effect on already a fragile segment of our population in Nigeria. These
orphans were not in school, they were malnourished, and many were vulnerable to human
trafficking, unplanned pregnancy and early marriage.
For the past seven years, I and my team have been
working to change the above narratives by
empowering these children and their mothers to
escape poverty, extreme hunger, have access to
education and affordable quality healthcare.
Together with my team and community and friends
from around the world especially the network of
Young African Leaders and Mandela Washington
Fellows, we have developed a model solving these
social problems around public healthcare, education,
agriculture and poverty eradication. This have
reached and served over 63,000 rural dwellers over a

3-Quarter period between 2015 and 2016.
Because of the enormity of the burden, we initiated quarterly (Q1, 2, 3 and Q4 yearly) capacity
building project supporting 613 individuals comprising mothers, teachers, community nurses and
pharmacists, and volunteers that supported over 63,000 rural dwellers which have been served
under our social safety net programs. We use education and empowerment to give them skills
and resources to escape poverty including micro-finance education and loans linkage/facilitation,
IT skill acquisition and/vocational training, guidance and counseling, farming tools, provision and
linkage to access improved seedlings, and home sanitation facility like preparation of water for
drinking through home based treatment and installation of locally-dug underground waste/faces
disposal pits and system. In the next year, 2018, we have set up machinery to select at least 10
students spreading across 10-communities for university education scholarship.
Combining talent, commitment and passion, I have
created youth employment opportunities in Health-IT:
Afripharm-network program with 372 active-members
(in 2016), learning, exploring and sharing resources on
how entrepreneurship and IT-innovation can be used in
tackling health problems in Enugu, Cross-River and
Ebonyi states with a Design-Driven-Expansion plan
across the region by 2023 year-end.
With a Harvardx University Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Healthcare in Emerging
Economies, I am also leading Afripharm’s mobile-Health-Information-Systems (mHIS)
offering/providing healthcare-givers with clinical information/evidence-based content through a
Cross-Platform-Android/iOS/Windows Point-of-Care App.
I started this Social-Enterprise out of deliberate effort to create synergy, shrinking high Mortality-
Rates by addressing key-breakdowns in the healthcare-value-chain that, if resolved, could timely
provide high-quality low-cost life-saving healthcare services/supplies:
http://www.slideshare.net/irembright/afripharm-private-sector-solution-for-public-health-pandemic

I got myself involved deeply in community developmental work due to the ravaging effect of
public health pandemics and epidemics like HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis etc; and the
failure of the government to adequately address these issues in providing solution, help and care.
Seeing this unacceptable inequality, I have to rise up, raise a team to fill in the gap and bring
efficiency by applying PRIVATE SECTOR SOLUTION FOR PUBLIC HEALTH/SECTOR
PROBLEMS. I have an obligation as a citizen of this world to do something positive for the many
thousands of vulnerable and challenged parts of our population who had no access to education,
healthcare, social amenities and above all, no hope of escaping extreme poverty unless someone
like me, and as I am already doing, takes some deliberate and conscious efforts towards bringing
help and solution to their reach. My love for Humanity, God and Myself have been my
propelling factors. Seeing a Fellow Citizen suffer is always a headache to me especially if it is
within my power to help and provide solution.
Q: What are you currently doing to end poverty?
Looking at our healthcare-value-chain’s unacceptable
2009-to-2015 statistics, I designed a need-based social-
enterprise module, “46-Healthcare-Fulfillment-Centers-
(HFCs)”, which created 63-direct jobs and reduced
Mortality-Rates from preventable illnesses. This
ensured efficiency in the ecosystem, reducing
households’ access costs and increasing
immunization(s)/vitamin-A supplementation coverage.
Our 46-HFCs (http://www.slideshare.net/irembright/transforming-healthcare-systems-afripharms-
gamechanging-businessmodels) helped 307 under-5-children get Oral-Polio-Vaccine-
immunization/de-worming in 2016 1st-Quarter. Knowing why mothers shun/skip antenatal-care
and the socioeconomic consequences, our social-marketing strategy, “Community-Health-Talks”
transferred need-based education/training, creating 516-subscriber data-base of women-groups in
32-weeks being routinely educated on immunization/Exclusive-Breastfeeding-FAQs/Family-
Planning which added-up in reducing under-5 mortality-rates by 43% in 2-years. Our home-
grown-HFCs-model, lowered barriers to healthcare; encouraging more frequent
conversations/individuals’-check-ups about health.
I am currently operating a social enterprise network (see link on
https://www.slideshare.net/irembright/our-impact-towards-ending-extreme-poverty-eradicating-

hunger-and-improving-access-to-quality-healthcare-and-education) that is critically and sustainably
addressing the issue of education, health as already noted, agriculture and mining works, all these
have direct bearing on improving rural economy and thereby pulling the rural dwellers out of
above the poverty line household by household.
Q: What is your View about Poverty, UN-SDG, our World and your Way Forward?
According to Tao Tse Chung, I have personally
learned to See what connects me to the world, not
what separates me from it.
Every so often, there are moments that define a
generation; we face our own defining moment. As
a generation, we faced hard days and our own
share of failure, but I have learned then that no
matter how great the challenge or how difficult the
circumstance, change is always possible if I am
/we’re willing to work for it, and brave it, and,
above all, believe in it. In the end, that is the World’s greatest gift to all those who choose to make
a home on her endless frontier.
But against all possible odds, we still believe that no matter our story, or what we look like, or who
our parents are, this is a world where we can solve our community problems if we try especially in
the horizon of hope- that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that
something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and crave for
it.
From mere thought that, together, ordinary people like me and my team can do extraordinary
things; especially now that the spread of information and technology (IT) have reduced barriers to
opportunity and prosperity. While the twentieth century taught us that we share a common
destiny, the twenty-first has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.
Our generation can bring in peace by ending extreme poverty and achieving the UN-SDGs, and
we have a world of highly limited social vices and clean environment.

Then, the will be no more grading of first-world countries, second world and third world
countries. I cannot wait for that to happen, and that’s why I get myself involved in making it
happen, and I believe, one day, it shall come to fulfillment.
With poverty being one of the most challenging issue of our time, I will be encouraging all of us
to roll our sleeves and go to work; to jointly solve the problem of inequality and poverty such that
our children and children of the world will have chance to be well educated in a peaceful world
with clean and safe environment and without hunger and diseases.
I am encouraging all of you listening, and those that will read this interview later not to give up no
matter how hard it gets. If someone like I and my team can do it, anyone else can.
I had first-hand experience of what extreme poverty means, and I am here as a champion and a
global advocate on how to solve the problem of extreme poverty in our world.
The world, our world, needs ALL OF US; No matter who you are!
Going Forward and View for My Future Awards.
The innovation and strategic work that we have
been able to do through the Future View Green
Initiatives and Afripharm Medicals is the most
important thing I have ever done, given our
sustainability and strategic positioning for scaling.
Our little efforts have been growing into a model
capable of transforming and developing
communities. It is in my (our) strongest belief that,
involving rural communities in NEEDS assessment
to identify their unique problems and design
INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS acceptable to them
within the cultural and ethical norms of the people is one key way of moving fast in solving social
problems especially at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).

Community empowerment is another key factor: organizations should strengthen their host
communities with a long term view of creating sustainability and independence.
It is also in my strongest believe that, this Yeast-budding-effect model of ours has the potential to
transform many other rural communities not just in Nigeria, but across Africa and even Middle
East.
This award by the University community will help us peak on awareness: create a robust web
presence to take leverage of high GSM/internet penetration in Nigeria, and this will have
potentiating effect and increase our pace of development that will lead to our eventual success and
breakthrough.
We would depoly the award money in expanding our rural operational base especially by capacity
building: training many trainers and setting up IT hub for skill acquisition especially in the critical
and high demand areas of Programming and Coding which will expose young kids to even be fit
for job opportunities in “developed” world and economies. This award is going to be a huge plus
for our youth and women in the villages we are currently serving and plan to serve.
We have plans to start an IT-based Robust healthcare
delivery system that will bridge the gap between healthcare
providers in the major city and consumers in the rural
areas through our innovatively designed model taking
leverage of mobile diagnostics stations, mobile phones and
internet, and we currently do not have any funding to
execute this project. This award money would go a very
long way to help us in getting this Social investment of
ours in place and operational through our patternership
plans and arrangement with Care-on-Demand and Beacon
Healthcare System in USA.

Thank you All for this interview.
I urge you the press men and women to help us
spread our story, our impact and our plans, by
so doing, we ALL are becoming a voice for the
voiceless, a channel through which hope and
dignity/succor will be restored in our world
starting from one community at a time.
Thank you.
Yours Globally
Bright Chimezie Irem
Lead Initiator, FVGI
Fellow Global Citizen
Nigeria.

FVGI empowers 63,000 in rural Nigeria

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FVGI empowers 63,000 in rural Nigeria