COFI Commemorates World Day of Social Justice

The Chris Oyakhilome Foundation International (COFI) is proud to commemorate World Day of Social Justice. This day is also known as Social Justice Equality Day and is an international day recognizing the need to promote social justice. This includes issues such as poverty, gender inequality, unemployment, human rights, and social protections.

 

The United Nations has decided to observe 20 February every as the World Day of Social Justice. This includes childhood poverty, global citizenship, human rights, and sustainable development.

 

Sustainable Development

 

The Chris Oyakhilome Foundation International (COFI) together with its partners like Innercity Mission for Children (ICM) and various sponsors works tirelessly towards achieving the Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDG).

 

The Sustainable Development Goals are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. Sustainable development can be defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

 

They address meeting human development goals with all the global challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice.

 

The desired result is a society where living conditions and resources are used to continue to meet human needs without undermining the stability and future of the natural world.

 

Eradicating hunger and malnutrition is one of the great challenges of our time. Not only do the consequences of not having enough, or the wrong food cause suffering and poor health, they also slow progress in many other areas of development like education and employment.

 

Through its initiatives, COFI seeks to offer structured support for impoverished children across the world in order to guarantee access to qualitative education, medical care, physical and spiritual nourishment thus enabling them to lead normal, competitive, and useful lives in their communities and to live out their God-given destinies.

 

 

The theme for 2022: Achieving Social Justice through Formal Employment

 

One of the biggest contributors to ending poverty is ensuring children have an education. For any child, education can open doors to the future that would otherwise be locked tight. Children who are not in school are at greater risk of exploitation and early marriage. They’re on track for a much lower income once they grow up. This limits the future for their own children, thus repeating the cycle of poverty generation after generation.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused worldwide socio-economic devastation and has highlighted the vulnerability of workers in the informal economy.

 

Informal workers, who often lack any form of social protection or employment-related benefits, are twice as likely to be poor compared to formal workers. Most people enter the informal economy not by choice, but due to a lack of opportunities in the formal economy.

 

Promoting the transition to formal employment is a necessary condition to reduce poverty and inequalities, advance decent work, increase productivity and sustainability of enterprises and expand the government’s scope of action, notably in times of crisis.

 

This is why Chris Oyakhilome together with COFI and ICM places such an emphasis on education and building schools as a path to breaking the cycle of poverty.