I don’t know where the idea came from, but immediately after hearing of my mum’s assassination on the 4^th of June, I knew I would set up an organization that would honor her and promote her commitment to restoring democracy in Nigeria.

But what exactly would the organization do? I had no idea.

My mum’s work suggested an answer. Her joy during her involvement with the pro-democracy movement had come from working with women and youth, especially market women and students. In a political terrain where leaders often demonstrated extreme opportunism, she was inspired by the integrity and commitment of these two groups and had felt that political, social and economic transformation in Nigeria was not possible without their participation.

So in the summer and fall that followed, I gathered close friends together in several small meetings to think through what memorializing my mother’s commitment to democracy could look like.

By summer’s end, we were clear that an organization that honored my mother’s passion had to be a vehicle for developing women and youth as change agents in Nigeria. We even crafted the goal: to restore democracy by empowering civil society in the spirit of commitment demonstrated by Kudirat Abiola. To achieve this, we identified five focus areas — women, youth, media, civil society development and friends (the solidarity idea instrumental in achieving democracy in South Africa). Both the goal and the focus areas has been clarified a great deal this year but served us well for our first three years.

To support the idea, a dear friend, late Professor Leroy Vail, donated $50 and my Senior Adviser, Judy Murciano, helped connect me with funders.

By the time I finished at Harvard, on the last week of January 1997, a small group of people and I had built a veritable castle in the air. All that was left was to put the foundations that could support it.

By This group, referred to as the KIND team, are: Dapo Olorunyomi, Bolade Gbadegesin, Makin Soyinka, Khafila Abiola, Yemi Adamolekun, and Tokunbo Lawal.

We began ’97 by naming our dream. We came up with the acronym — KIND. I love the acronym because it captures my mum in a word but also captures the type of space I want to create through the organization’s work.

What the acronym stands for has gone through a few changes. It first stood for Kudirat Institute for Nigerian Democracy. But ‘Institute’ sounded too stiff, and we are not so much about structure as we are about responding to the needs of our target community; so Institute was substituted for Initiative, which seems more dynamic. Later we thought, why just Nigeria? Why not Africa? Nigeria was dropped, leaving the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy.

Since we raised very little start-up money, the team concentrated on building relationships with organizations already working on Nigeria. Two organizations that we collaborated with to promote KIND’s vision were Africa Fund & Amnesty USA.

At Amnesty’s invitation, I completed a two-month speaking tour, addressing many of their chapters and regional conferences around the U.S. Thereafter, student groups began inviting me for speaking engagements.

We also got involved with the Africa Fund, which had been instrumental in building the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. Africa Fund used its anti-apartheid network to begin building a grassroots solidarity group on behalf of Nigeria’s democracy efforts in the U.S.

Both organizations provided the organizational strength/structure that KIND did not yet have. After my talks, Amnesty and Africa Fund followed up with the different audiences, providing them with materials and consistent support as they formed into groups and took action in support of democracy and human rights in Nigeria.

KIND also provided some follow-up services through a program we developed called the Friends of Nigeria Network (F.O.N - our solidarity building program). We set up a listserv which disseminated daily news to its members and developed a very detailed website with background information on Nigeria, samples of petitions and information on existing campaigns.

By the Friends of Nigeria (FON) network. Team members took up different roles and responsibilities in developing the FON network:

KIND, Amnesty and Africa Fund made for a winning combination, recording several achievements in the struggle to restore democracy in Nigeria. KIND helped organize: the National Day of Student Action in the U.S. involving over 200 Amnesty groups in support of Nigerian youths; the campaigns for the successful passage of several resolution and sanction bills in major American cities and towns — of ten bills, we organized and testified for five; and the campaign for the co-naming of a New York street after Kudirat Abiola.

By May, it felt like we were finally making some headway in getting the United States to shift from a policy that seemed to uncertain about how to treat Nigeria’s military regime to one of support for the pro-democracy struggle. By speaking at shareholder meetings, we had even gotten oil multinationals to promise to request that the military release oil workers that had been unjustly incarcerated.

We also began sending money home to support the youth-organized pro-democracy efforts.

In July, my dad, Moshood Abiola, who had been in solitary confinement, incarcerated by Nigeria’s military dictatorship for having been elected president in the 1993 elections, died on the eve of his release. At the same time, hundreds of journalists, students, unionists and pro-democracy activists who had also been incarcerated in prisons all over the country were released and the military promised to transfer to democratic rule by May of 1999.

The promised transfer was welcome news, but KIND team members realized that only a strong civil society in Nigeria could ensure a credible democracy. We needed to start developing our other programs, which emphasized strengthening civil society in Nigeria.

Opportunities provided by our relationships with human rights organizations allowed KIND to build a record of accomplishments, boosting our credibility with potential funders and paving the way for a change in KIND’s financial situation in ’99.

’99 opened beautifully for KIND. In December, a letter written to Higher Ground for Humanity requesting that the new foundation be KIND’s first principal sponsor resulted in an invitation from HGH’s two founders — Nedra Caroll and Jewel Kilcher — that I join them at their home in San Diego for an interview and a New Year’s Eve ceremony.

The trip culminated in a commitment from HGH to give a significant grant allocated mainly to operational expenses and the funding of a needs assessment and training project in Nigeria.

This meeting was a turning point for KIND, after three years of thinking aloud, KIND could finally begin developing projects!

This new phase demanded a stronger operational structure at KIND and team members had to assume more responsibilities. I resigned from my full-time job at Special Olympics in January with a promise to remain a part of that noble movement. Khafila, Tokunbo and Yemi also worked part time during the year for KIND while the other team members volunteered more time to help with projects.

By February, we had set up an office, hired an administrative assistant; and by April, we had set up KIND’s Board of Trustees and Board of Directors.

Our first set of tasks involved developing the KIND image and materials. While everyone responded enthusiastically to our acronym, we still needed a logo that captured the vision and mission of KIND.

I contacted Spotcolor, a dynamic, incredibly creative group of people, to help with this. Several visits, proposed logos and surveys later, we decided on the logo we now have. Tokunbo pointed out that the logo looked like a woman with a large heart, the perfect KIND image!

Also working with Spotcolor, we developed KIND’s brochure, completely revised our website, developed business cards and a letterhead. Our new website reflects KIND’s growth, from an organization focused on one program (the Friends of Nigeria network) to one with several programs (Friends, Interlink — which has both a youth and a women’s component, Conflict Resolution/Prevention, and Media).

At the same time that we were developing KIND’s visual identity, we were also developing its other programs. In February, we held our first major activity in Nigeria, KIND’s Media Award ceremony where we donated a laptop computer, printer and $1000 to a talented young journalist as a way of supporting media in Nigeria. The event, organized by Makin Soyinka and a volunteer, Folusho Fadayomi, was really successful, generating a lot of publicity for KIND in the country. Makin was invited onto several radio and television stations with people calling in and encouraging KIND’s efforts J.

To celebrate the work done by Nigerian pro-democracy organizations as well as our friends in the international solidarity network, KIND co-hosted a reception with the Canadian Embassy in the U.S. Khafila Abiola and Keke Adenuga worked on this with people from the Canadian Embassy.

The event, which took place at the end of May, coincided with the transfer to democratic rule taking place in Nigeria, marking the end of one form of pro-democracy struggle where the focus was to get the military out of power and the start of another, where we needed to emphasize reconstruction and building of civil society.

In the summer, an 8-woman team composed of four Americans, one Australian and three Nigerians went to Nigeria to conduct a needs assessment tour and launch KIND in Nigeria.

Yemi Adamolekun and a local contact, Comfort Idiika, organized our Needs Assessment Tour of Nigeria, which was funded by HGH. The tour, conducted in July, was a wonderful learning experience for our organization (please read the tour report and look through the pictures on our website).

We visited ten states in all three regions of Nigeria and conducted workshops attended by approximately three hundred NGOs and community based organizations (CBOs) that work with women and youth in the areas of political, economic and social empowerment.

The trip was incredible and all members of the team were inspired by how much community based organizations accomplish with very limited resources. Working directly with grassroots communities, they are building new relationships, practices and institutions to strengthen Nigeria’s fledging democracy; they are involved in civic rights education, developing progressive legislation (especially on issues that affect women), and promoting economic empowerment of women. We saw that their efforts can transform Nigeria into a country that works for everyone. Following the tour, KIND produced a tour report and directory, which we made available to the groups.

Also in the summer, we launched the Nigeria chapter of KIND. Tokunbo, working with a team of 12 people, organized the launching. The event was very successful: political, religious and business people; and Ambassadors and Diplomats from Germany, Japan, and Norway attended. We raised 500,000 naira ($5000) and as the event was shown on national television and on the pages of national newspapers, raised publicity for KIND.

Following the launch, we opened our first Nigeria office in Lagos and hired Tony Abbey as our Nigeria program officer.

In the fall and winter, Khafila organized our most successful speaking tour both in terms of fundraising and reach. She expanded KIND’s speaking tour to include countries like England, Canada and Jamaica and our reach beyond the traditional human rights audiences such as Amnesty International to include the Disney Institute, Leadership America, Jamaica’s National Democratic Movement and the Kellogg Foundation. And honoraria in 1999 brought KIND over $12,000, which went to support KIND’s projects in Nigeria.

Our activities and experiences in the last 12 months have helped us better understand the needs and strengths of the communities we want to serve and, consequently, about what KIND needs to be and do. Thanks to HGH and KIND’s incredible team, a beautiful dream is more real than it’s ever been.

2000 promises to be KIND’s most exciting year, filled with projects and activities that promote our mission to strengthen initiatives and organizations that work for the advancement of women and youth in Nigeria!

Already, we:

• Revised our vision, mission and strategies so that our work comes across more clearly.
• Also developed a fundraising plan, structure and culture for KIND.
• Expanded our Board of Trustees and Directors.
• Clarified and strengthened our administrative and financial structure.
• Received $160,000 through our fundraising efforts that will be used to acquire KIND’s first training center and 30 computers that will equip the training center.

During the summer, we hope to:

• Open our training center.
• Develop our training curriculum and begin offering courses.
• Develop our Young Women’s Leadership Network.
• Conduct our second KIND Media Award.
• Continue to deepen and expand our support base.

Thank you to Lynne Twist for working with us to re-state our vision and to develop KIND’s fundraising plan; to the new members of KIND’s Boards and staff who carry our vision and help us achieve it; and to the Friends of Kind community (KIND’s sponsors) for giving so generously toward achieving our goals for the year!