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Interfaith Forum of Muslim and Christian Women’s Association, aka, Women’s Interfaith Counccil (WIC)

Kaduna, Nigeria
Joined June 2016
Presence in: Nigeria
Focus: Education, Environmental Justice, Family, Gender-based violence, Governance, Accountability & Transparency, Health, Housing Rights & Informal Settlements, Livelihoods, Peace-building & Transitional Justice

The Interfaith Forum of Muslim and Christian Women’s Association, a.k.a., Women’s Interfaith Council (WIC) is a non-governmental, non-profit, interfaith and voluntary organization established by an Irish Nun in Kaduna (Nigeria) in 2010. The organization got registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission under the Nigerian law vide registration number: CAC/IT/NO 58374 in 2012. The vision for establishing the organization is to bring together, the leaders and members of women’s faith groups in Kaduna State under one umbrella to address the following:
• Peace and conflicts issues,
• Women’s specific common concerns (economic empowerment, health, education/literacy, hygiene, sanitation and environment) and
• Poverty-related issues.
While WIC’s vision is “a society where Muslims and Christians live together in peace, where the rights of women are respected, and where women are protagonists of peaceful coexistence and development”;
Its mission is “to enable women of faith associations work together to bring about peace, stability and development in Kaduna in particular and Nigeria in general by addressing conflict issues and issues of concern to women with the primary focus on conflict, poverty, insecurity and vulnerability”.
The vision and mission of WIC are from the perspective of being ‘entry points’ for the deepening of engagement with the various stakeholders, like faith groups, policy makers and traditional leaders on issues relating to interfaith peaceful coexistence and the greater involvement of women in community, security and development issues within the state and beyond. To facilitate this, WIC creates and sustains interests in relevant thematic areas like: conflict analysis and transformation; interfaith understanding and collaboration; gender and poverty, health and environmental issues from which women have not had a fair share owing to the fusion of different primordial factors which prevent them from assuming their roles as peace makers and peace builders in society.
WIC’s core objectives include:
 To provide a forum for leaders and members of Muslim and Christian women’s faith organizations to come together in sincere and concrete dialogue.
 To enable Muslim and Christian women’s faith groups to work together in the peace-building process to address issues that are causing conflict.
 To facilitate Muslim and Christian women’s faith organizations to work together to concretely address women’s common concerns.
As “Mothers of a Culture of Peace”, WIC also extends its activities to include youth work and the promotion of youth’s greater involvement in peace building and harmonious interfaith co-existence bearing in mind that untamed youth constitute a major harbinger to violence especially in this part of the country.