N’Delta Dev: Group Advocates Community – Based Approach

The Centre for Development Support Initiative (CEDSI), says it has promoted environmental sustainability within the last 20 years in the Niger Delta.
Country Director of the organisation, Dr Mina Ogbanga, said this during the 20th anniversary celebration of the organisation in Port Harcourt.
“It has been 20 years of promoting economic women and youth empowerment and environmental sustainability.
“The journey has been filled with ups and downs but today, we celebrate the fact that we have impacted in so many lives and many lives are better off and many communities and their members are able to be part of their development processes because of the capacities that have been built within and amongst them”, she said.
Ogbanga also said the Niger Delta needs a development module that will be grassroot based, adding that such module should be developed by respective communities in the region as they alone understand their needs.
She said the module will ease the developmental effort of both governmental and non-governmental organisations in their development activities in the region.
Ogbanga also said the situation will check duplications of projects, check corruption as well as reduce the rate of unemployment in the region.
She said that in the last 20 years, the organisation had worked with several groups to bring development closer to the doorsteps of communities.
According to her, CEDS, has helped in the designing of effective policies for communities to realise their developmental potentials, adding that the effort has benefitted more than 600 communities in the region.
Also speaking, the media officer of the organisation Tony Abehsaid CEDSI has impacted so much in the Niger Delta in the areas of conflict resolution, development, health, environment and empowerment, especially of women and youths.
He also said the group has also embarked on capacity building programme for people of the region through training and advocacy, adding that projects have been designed to meet the specific needs of several communities in the region.