Juliana Francis
Pastor Juliet Olele is the founder of City of fulfillment Ministries, located at the Gowon Estate area of Egbeda, Lagos State.
She’s also the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Comforter's Hand of Care Foundation. The foundation focuses on putting smiles on faces of widows and orphans.
According to Olele, her calling was to take care of men and women, and to ensure she moves them to their land of fulfillment through holiness and praise.
Pastor Olele, who hails from Edo State, described herself as an orphan.
She founded the foundation on November 29, 2020. She started it after she noticed how widows, with their children suffered during the national lockdown precipitated by the advent of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria. She still recalled how the sufferings of such women caused her to breakdown and wept.
According to her, it was during her church’s women’s convention that she decided to call widows and began empowering them with cash. Since then, she had taken special interest in women and had expanded her helpline to children of widows and orphans, giving out scholarships.
She stated that within two months of the foundation’s inception, it has grown in leaps and bounds, with more women coming from farther parts of Lagos and Ogun states to partake in the empowerment programme.
She explained that within a space of a month or two, she had been able to empower 20 widows with N20, 000 to start up petty businesses.
She said: “Along the line, we were able to build a house for a 72-year-old widow, who was abandoned. We have been able to place a lot of children in our scholarship schemes. One of them is the daughter of a cleaner. We gave her a scholarship from senior secondary school (SS1) to university level. There's another widow whose husband had been in the mortuary since last year. The foundation gave her money to start up a business and placed her children on scholarship as well. By God’s grace, we have been able to do a lot of things. We have a lot of widows who do not have houses of their own and we’re trying to see how we can take care of their situations.”
Olele, who stressed that keeping the foundation running had not been easy, added that God had been the source of income with which she was using to run the foundation.
She narrated: “I’m also into selling cotton materials and other stuff. God has provided me with supportive people; they believe in my vision and mission and have never abandoned me. At the moment, we don't really have many supporters. I can count two or three persons that have been supportive. The only challenge we have at the moment is still finance. We don't have many supporters yet, and we have too many ideas and projects to execute. We have just discovered a community somewhere on Lagos Island, called Ilaje. There are about 40,000 people living there and they don’t have toilets. At the moment, we’re trusting God. We have been given land by the Baale of that community, so we’re trusting God to start that project soonest. Our target is to build four toilets and two bathrooms for the community.”
She revealed the discovery of another community called Kangari, where they don’t have water. She said that there are about 50,000 people in the Kanagari Community, and strongly believed that with the help of God, the foundation will be able to provide water for the community.
“Our greatest challenge right now is finance. We have so much to do and what we have is not enough to make that happen. This foundation is touching lives and giving hope to the hopeless. It makes me see the world in a different perspective entirely. I can empathize with people and when I put myself in their shoes, I feel what they feel. Seriously, it’s a positive effect on me,” said Olele.
The cleric said that she had seen a lot of situations, whereby people, whom she assisted, turned around to abuse such privileges. She said such disappointing behaviours from such people had never crushed her spirit or determination to bring a ray of sunshine into the lives of people.
She recollected: “A lot of people have abused the privileges we give to them, but we don't pay them back in kind. There are so many times one feels like regretting helping people, because after helping them, they’ll come and hit you negatively. Some of them seemed to have the notion that the government is actually our sponsor. I remember a case whereby we gave out N20, 000 to different widows. One of them expressed the feeling that the money should have been more, that maybe the government was sponsoring the foundation. The truth is that I’m the founder and from the little resources I have, and with support from a few partners, we’re able to impact lives.”
Olele explained that what usually gives her joy and satisfaction was to see smiles on the faces of beneficiaries of her foundation.
She said: “The foundation gives a ray of hope to many and brings smiles to their faces. A woman, who couldn't eat three times a day, can now eat and take care of her children. This knowledge keeps me going. Some of these women come back to share testimonies of how their petty business was faring. The business can now help them to put food on their table. Imagine the cleaner whose daughter’s education had been taken care of by the foundation. Presently, we’re working assiduously to ensure we can be able to give free education to more orphans and the less privileged among us.”
Revealing some of the projects the foundation was working on, Olele said that she was presently focusing on the rehabilitation of some prostitutes. “They’re beautiful ladies, but they are working in the streets. Our plan is to provide apartments and give them reasons to leave the streets and aim for a better life.”
She said when people do anything to enhance humanity; they shouldn’t wait for a reward, for the only acceptable reward comes from God. Olele said that the only thanks she expected from the beneficiaries, was for them to ensure they used the widow’s mite given to them prudently.
And for the youngsters given scholarships, she wants to see them come out in flying colours.
Asked if she was showing sympathy and empathy to widows and orphans because she’s a pastor, Olele smiled and replied: “I actually started helping people before I became a pastor. I started when I was younger. A friend of mine recently reminded me of the way I used to steal my mom's tea with bread to give to them when we were in school because they couldn’t afford such items back then. That was how the life of reaching out to the less privileged started, and it had always been a part of my life. This is my life. Although combining the ministry and foundation is tasking, I will continue to operate both as long as I have the energy.”
Olele said that the fact the foundation had achieved so much in such a short time was an indication that within the next five years, it will be known internationally.
“We don't just intend to help those in Lagos State alone, we’re trusting God to extend our hands at the moment.
At the moment, there’s an orphanage in Sierra Leone and another in Gambia, imploring me to extend our helpline to them. But at the moment, we can’t! This is because we have limited resources. When we start to have more supporters we will be able to extend our helpline to outside Nigeria, but right now, it’s just Nigeria.”
Olele said that for the foundation to continue without faltering, she may have to seek support from other well-meaning Nigerians. She also noted that such support will help the foundation to be able to provide apartments for 10 widows. These widows are presently sleeping in containers, said Olele.
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