Vision Dreaming

Olukunle Oluwole Foundation (OOF) is a body with broad international structure, and goals to be accomplished by influencing governments, and not constituted as political parties. We address a variety of issues and causes, ranging over scientific exchanges, religion, emergency aid, and humanitarian affairs. We devoted to the welfare of children, for communities to be able to provide for the health and well being of their members, and families can achieve lives of hope, good health, and self-sufficiency. The organization was established to help children and community in the rural area. OOFs currently focuses on establishing Programmes that give long-term benefits to children and its environment everywhere, particularly those in rural areas who are in the greatest need.

OOF's support for primary health care, nutrition, basic education, water and sanitation Programmes. One of the Organisation's main Programmes, Universal Child Immunization, together with the World Health Organization (WHO), one of OOF's other partners. OOF supports AIDS education and child abuse Programmes, and works closely in this field with governments, WHO, and non-governmental organizations. OOF work will be accomplished with voluntary contributions from you, governments and non-governmental sources. 

Each year Olukunle Oluwole Foundation (OOF) relies more and more on private donations to provide our important services to children and families and in 2010 and beyond it is even more important. OOFs is committed to making your donations work hard for the people we serve by keeping our administrative costs exceptionally low so that an overwhelming percentage goes to our programs. Our administrative costs were just 10%, meaning 90% of our budget went to directly work for families and children!   

OUR MISSION:
Olukunle Oluwole Foundation (OOF) mission is to prevent diseases, improve community health, and promote sustainable development.

OOF also works to achieve lasting improvements for children living in poverty in poorest communities, through a process that unites people across cultures and adds meaning and value to their lives by:

• Enabling deprived children, their families and their communities to meet their basic needs and to increase their ability to participate in and benefit from their societies.

• Inspiring deprived children, their families and their communities to socially and economically empower themselves to be agents of change in their own lives and for a more equitable world.

• Preventing and responding to violence, exploitation and abuse against children- including commercial sexual exploitation, trafficking, child labour and harmful traditional practices, such as child marriage.

VISION :

 
Motivated by our concern for the world's most vulnerable children, families, and communities. Olukunle Oluwole Foundation (OOF) envisions a world where abundant resources are shared, communities are able to provide for the health and well being of their members, and children and families can achieve lives of hope, good health, and self-sufficiency. 

OOF believes in a proactive approach to protect children from any form of violence, exploitation, abuse and discrimination. Rather than waiting until it?s too late, OOF strives to identify at risk children and provide sustainable assistance to both the children and their families. 

OPERATING PRINCIPLES:

Accountability:  We implement programs with meaningful, concrete, and measurable results.  We set clear goals and track our progress. We hold ourselves fully accountable to our donors and those we serve.·

Integration:  Improving community health requires an integrated approach in order to achieve lasting impact. Our programs address factors that influence health, such as access to nutritious foods, clean waters, education, gender equity, and economic empowerment.

Capacity Building:  We are committed to community-based health and development programs. We empower local communities, organizations, and networks by equipping them with the tools and resources they need to deliver and sustain effective programs.  We form partnerships with local organizations that emphasize mutual respect, two-way and innovative learning methods, and application of new knowledge and skills.

Responsiveness:  While having the technical and organizational experience, expertise, and resources of a global organization, we stay grounded and responsive to community needs in order to achieve effective and sustainable solutions to local problems.

OOF & Millennium Development Goals:

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Goal 2: Achieve universal nine-year basic education.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women.

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality.

Goal 5: Improve maternal health.

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.

Goal 8: Forge A Global Partnership For Development.

Our Core Values:

Olukunle Oluwole Foundation values and promotes the rights of children, thus, we work to create opportunities for meaningful child participation in all of our programs. We have the potential and responsibility to make countries one in which every child has the opportunity to fully develop all aspects of his/her unique personality and talents within a supporting family, community and society. We value these eight principles which guide our work and relationships:

1. We value people: OOF is committed to developing equitable relationships through listening to and respecting people's ideas, morals, and culture.

2. We are open and responsive to change: OOF believes that openness to change begins with the individual. OOF and its staff welcome feedback; we seek to learn from our mistakes, as well as our successes in order to build an organization committed to reflection and learning. This will enable us to develop appropriate and effective strategies for achieving our vision.

3. We are professional: OOF is a non-profit organization committed to excellence. We provide equal opportunities to all of the children, families, and volunteers we work with, regardless of age, gender, disability, ethnicity, religious and/or political affiliation.

4. We are honest: OOF is both accountable and transparent. We take ownership and responsibility for all of our actions, while being open and honest in all that we do.

5. We are committed to helping those in need: OOF is committed to working with needy children, families and other vulnerable people. Our belief is that sustainable development should stem directly from the people and that through self-empowerment, capacity building, and participation they can improve their lives.

6. We are committed to peace and justice: Peace and justice are at the heart of any program that OOF creates. OOF is an organization that conducts business in the most peaceful way possible, without causing any harm to other people, animals, or the environment. We aim for the equality and justice for all children.

7. We realize the importance of all of our partnerships: Whether it is long term or one-time donors, specific program partnerships, and/or strictly volunteer efforts, OOF acknowledges its donors and partners regardless of age, gender, disability, religious or political affiliation. OOF depends fully on support provided from our donors and/or partners.

8. We do not have any religious affiliation: At OOF we do not incorporate any religious practices in our work, nor do we force any religion upon our beneficiaries. We do however, need financial assistance from any and all types of funding partners, whether religiously affiliated or not. In our work, we seek mutual respect through understanding among our multi-faith staff and communities.

What Makes OOF Unique:

While there are many NGO?s and other aid groups that focus on helping people who have been victimized by human trafficking and sexual exploitation, OOF is special in the fact that it seeks to identify children at high risk for being trafficked in the communities where they live, in order to prevent them from being exploited in the first place. To achieve this goal, OOF has created a standardized system that allows the organization to input data collected from initial assessments of the family?s history in order to determine the level of risk faced by each child considered for support.

Similar to the process used by insurance companies, factors such as family size, parent employment status, debt levels, literacy, gender, land ownership, the prevalence of alcoholism, drug use, and HIV within the family, and the family?s financial status are assigned different values according to their causal significance, using past data from trafficked children to determine their relative importance. Children who score above a certain level are then selected for aid.

Although OOF supports many children, both male and female, a special emphasis is placed on protecting girls older than ten years old, as statistics show that they represent the highest risk of being trafficked, primarily for sexual exploitation. Moreover, girls are the most likely to be deprived of the chance to attend school as many society largely considers the education of women, who traditionally remain home and do not work, unimportant. 

Currently, OOF has identified far more children at high-risk for potential trafficking then they can support due to the financial constraint and the high percentage of families living in extreme poverty.

OOF understands that it is nearly impossible to help the affected children without also helping their families. Although some victims are trafficked by strangers, a much higher percentage are trafficked by someone they know, a fact that illustrates that family and community members play a major role in either preventing or facilitating human trafficking. 

Furthermore, OOF also recognizes that the factors that contribute to human trafficking do not stop at the children?s immediate family ? it is a community wide problem. As a result, OOF has increasingly become involved in projects such as well building that benefit entire villages, many of whom have no access to clean drinking water, forcing the families who live in them to spend up to 50 percent of their daily income in order to buy water from outside sources.

Ensuring access to quality education for children is a high priority, proving time and time again to be a highly effective mechanism for preventing children from becoming involved in commercial sexual exploitation. 

Although OOF does not run its own school, the organization provides the children with daily pocket money, bicycles for transportation, uniforms for school, and all the school materials they need in order to attend state schools, in addition to hiring tutors and conducting seminars in the compound to help supported children to succeed academically.

Although the primary goal of OOF is to prevent human trafficking, the organization has also committed itself to preventing all forms of violence, exploitation, abuse, and discrimination within the communities in which it works. In order to achieve these goals, OOF emphasizes the importance of responsibility.

Sadly, many parents who were themselves raised in difficult circumstances do not understand their role in improving the lives of their own children. Through its livelihood program, which works in conjunction with its child protection program, 

OOF has sought to provide opportunities to the poorest families to begin earning money using the skills they already posses, or teaching them new skills they can use. By providing start up capital for them to open small businesses, the poorest families are given a chance to double or triple their daily incomes, with showing them that they need to be responsible for help themselves, instead of relying on others who can and do exploit them and their children.

Because OOF recognizes the importance of family in improving the lives of supported children, the organization places emphasis on allowing them to live with their families, in their own communities. The majority of those that OOF supports live at home as opposed to placing them in institutionalized care where they are unable to assist their younger brothers and sisters.

Moreover child adoption programs and the like displace the children from their communities and families that make up an important part of society life. However, there are some cases where OOF recognizes that living at home is detrimental to the development of the child, for instance in abusive situations. 

Additionally, some villages are so far from the nearest school that it would be nearly impossible for them to travel back and forth each day, especially when the route it dangerous for them to travel. If supported children live more than 6 km from their school, then the children are given a place to stay at the OOF compound, which is close enough to their homes that they can frequently visit their families.

The OOF Compound is more than just a shelter that provides a safe place to stay and food to eat, but also a place for learning. The greater goal of the Olukunle Oluwole Foundation is to teach the children skills that will allow them to succeed on their own once they grow up so that they will be better equipped to provide for their families. 

OOF understands that protecting them from harm is only a solution that will help them for the present. Social and financial education is of paramount importance, in order to ensure that they will be able to succeed throughout their lives.