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For 13 years, Crystal Chigbu, through the Irede Foundation, has brought succour to many physically challenged children and their families.
Chigbu was motivated to establish her foundation by the psychological pain and agony she went through by having her daughter born with one limb missing.
At some point in the course of her career in Procter and Gamble, she resigned from the company, abandoning a lucrative, well-paying position, fully determined to focus her energies on giving the daughter a headstart and equipping her to face life with confidence, boldness, uncommon goal, and focus with sure footedness, not minding the fact that a prosthetic limb supports her body.
In this interview, she shared the heartrending discovery that her daughter was born without one leg, the agonizing process of accepting the reality of the missing limb and then the uplifting resolve to turn the table and confront the challenge with a positive mindset targeted at achieving permanent solution. This eventually led to her setting up the Irede Foundation that has resulted to a growing story of life-changing impact across families.
How has it been with your journey of helping children with ambulatory challenges that have made them withdrawn, stigmatized and rejected by others?
Since its inception, Irede Foundation has been moving from one level of glory to another. God has been so good to us. Our work has also evolved beyond giving prosthetic limbs. We do a lot of advocacy and talk to the government for inclusive education for the disabled. We canvass employability for people with disabilities and carry out various research works to know what needs to be done for the physically challenged child to live a limitless life. In some cases, it might be to provide a prosthetic limb, wheelchair or walking stick to support a child. The response has been positive. Now, we also have a laboratory where we make prosthetic limbs. It is quite a small laboratory, but the end-to-end process of making limbs is our pride now. Most times we bring in the components. This has aided us to give out over 600 limbs.
How did you get the sponsorship for 600 limbs?
The provision of limbs for the children at the foundation has been sponsored by individuals, corporate organizations, foreign partners, donor agencies that give us funding to do advocacy work. That has been part of how we have been raising money in the last 13 years. We actually started with high networth individuals who gave us limbs. Beyond that, we now have corporate organisations that support us as well.
Does the support come monthly or yearly?
Some support us yearly; some do one-off while some have signed a long contract to support us as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. We started advocacy five years ago just before COVID-19.
How did you start your advocacy?
We started the advocacy because we found out that most of our children who had access to schools were being rejected because of being amputees. So, we started doing some work on inclusive education by talking to the government, to make sure that there is an inclusive budget for the disabled children. Yes, there is a budget for education, but after that there is no dedicated budget for children with disabilities. So, we asked the government to make provision in the budget for children with disabilities. We worked with the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Lagos State Office of Disability Affairs, National Commission for Persons With Disabilities, in Abuja. For the advocacy work, in Lagos State now, when officials of the relevant government are sitting to have conversation with respect to education, they invite us to be a part of it. We also trained the staff of the Ministry of Education and parents to know how to handle and talk to children with disabilities
Has the advocacy achieved the goals of the foundation?
What it has done is that once there is provision for anything, we will get some.
Do the amputated children get some directly?
No, it will not get to the children directly, but it is to make sure that the schools have the kind of provisions for children with disabilities.
There are special schools in Lagos that cater specifically for these children. We also make sure that there are trained staff available to support the children. Again, we ensure that under the law, no child could be rejected. So, if it is documented in the law not to reject a child, any school that goes contrary to that, we can file a case against the school that rejects a disabled child.
The second advocacy we did was around behavioural change on the part of employers with regards to young people with disabilities. We got funding from Act Foundation and trained both the organisations and their people. After that, the organisations employed people with disabilities and we heard positive stories. We did not know that these people could function effectively in a corporate environment. Now, we are doing much more and also got funding from Disability Rights to scale up the project which will run in Abuja, FCT, Nasarawa and Oyo states, among others. It is a two-edged work because we are helping people with disabilities and the corporate organisation to be ready and prepared. This is the reason I said earlier that we have evolved from giving prosthetic limbs to supporting parents, organisations down to the young people.
Is the advocacy for the amputated children or other forms of disabilities?
When it comes to advocacies, we are doing it across all disabilities. But in terms of providing artificial limbs, we provide them to children under the age of 18, and give support to the older people. It was the support that actually led to the employability programme. One of our success stories is Deborah whose picture is framed downstairs. We gave her that limb when she was 17 years after her amputation, today she is a nurse and does not depend on anybody. So, currently we are building our laboratory which will help us reduce the rising cost of the limbs because almost every part that we use is imported. We are trying to see how to reduce the cost by looking at the cost of the dollar. When the dollar rises, limbs also go up, when dollar comes down, the limb does not come down as well. So, the idea is to recycle some of the limbs that have been used by other children. So, we look at the components that we can circulate to make sure we can use them again. When they outgrow a certain age, they can drop a particular limb, though we might not be able to use everything, but there are some iron components that we can recycle and use for the other children, and that reduces our cost. All of these things happen in our laboratory. We also use the laboratory for our care-to-care consulting when we have older amputees who come to speak with younger amputees on how possible it is to live a good life. Overall, these are some of the things we are doing to make sure we give quality meaning in the lives of the amputated children.
How do some of these children feel seeing their peers with complete legs?
Well, they are happy because what the prosthetic gives them is an opportunity to be able to live a normal life. What we also experienced is that the moment they become teenagers, the way they think and perceive things becomes different probably due to hormonal change. So, we introduced mental health and social support which we do not do instead we partner with other organisations that work in mental health. We do it for the children to continue to improve, work on their mindset and how they will continue to live a full life. Most times, we use the ones that have gone through it to talk to the upcoming ones and it is a more established thing for both.
Coming out from Procter and Gamble, to an entirely different profession, how do you feel doing that?
In Procter and Gamble, I was in the Customer Business Development Department and worked with different customers and I rose through the ranks within the space before I left.
Now, here in Irede Foundation, I love my job because of my daughter’s disability and I decided to do more. It is impact work which is very fulfilling, doing what is beyond me, and not about me really. It started from my daughter’s story, but it has grown much more than my daughter’s story. More than 300 children have received attention; 600 prosthetic limbs have been given out. Seeing all sorts of children from the ones that have one limb amputated to ones that have three to four limbs amputated. I have seen double amputees and it is great that I am part of these children’s stories, their families and communities. It is very fulfilling not for only me, but my colleagues. For every time my team shows up, our motivating factor is to put a smile on the face of just one child which is huge.
Over the years, what has kept the Irede Foundation going?
Irede Foundation is a faith project because I am a Christian. Whenever it gets tough, I go back to God and ask what next? We have had very challenging times in making the limb of a child. I keep going to God to ask, what do I do? Once we have a child to support, whether we have money or not, the covenant I have with God is that it will be done and that has kept us going. Whichever way, funding will come for it to put a smile on a child. This, in all honesty, keeps me going. The second thing that keeps me is that I have the support of a strong board that continues to believe we can do it against all odds. My board members within and outside the country are fantastic people. They push us to do more. Our great and formidable team are wonderful because all these awards would not have come without the team who consistently show up and work hard.
Does the children’s condition affect them academically?
Absolutely not, but I do not think it should affect them academically because their brains are not affected, so one should not expect they would not perform academically. However, the psychological effect of the stigmatization that happens around them can affect them as such. That is why the work we do is to consistently give them hope. We have testimonies of children that do very well despite their amputation. One of the reasons we give prosthetic limbs is for the child to go back to school. We have scholarships for those whose parents cannot afford education. We have undergraduates called Irede champions that joined us when they were 17 years.
How effective is the laboratory now? Has any child started using a limb from there?
Yes, most of the prosthetics for the children in Lagos are produced in our laboratory
Describe a scenario where a champion walks in to get a limb?
Well, once parents and guardians reach out to us, we take it up from there. On the appointed day, the child comes in and meets with the programmes officer who he would have been talking with ab initio. If they are coming for the first time, they will have a counselling session that will take them through the process, show them a copy of what the leg would look like after they have completed the process. Most times, it could be very emotional; it can bring them to tears thinking, where would this lead me to. When they are done, they go through cast and measurement after the consent form has been signed. They would be given an appointment on when to come. It could take up to four to 13 weeks, depending on the type of amputation the child had. Medical experts and prosthetists are involved in the journey. If we discover any complex, we refer them to an orthopedic surgeon for whatever. They have to heal before they come back to fit their limbs again.
You have won many awards…
Some came from recognition of the work we do and speaking opportunities.
