you want to be successful in africa you need to find someone who's been there and done that and has a passion for it we've got all of that today with and duty chukwu from mission africa and glad to be here thank you for having me well i make i'm really excited about this because well when i go to the web site mission africa us we're going to have it up on the screen several times you say this and so let's just get right into it if that's ok with you and opening doors of cultural exchange and obtaining resources to assist underprivileged children and families ok that's an awful lot what does that mean it means that we should africa people have the opportunity to travel to africa shut just to experience life in a different culture that is one part of that the second part is we believe in looking for sauces when we come here to the united states when looking for greener pastures when looking for ways to find nigeria it's in the southeast d c is that attire have a specific name no this is what we wear every day it's just the different fabrics that have different names but getting back to of yes exactly you talk about this as well on the web site michigan africa main aims to empower children and families in the remote villages of nigeria tanzania uganda and kenya by providing support in the three core areas of education health care and poverty alleviation so before we get into those specific areas why the remote villages don't most of the people live in the cities no everybody who lives in the village in the city actually has a village  most people who live in the villages are people who have retired from the cities or people who are hall that they cannot keep up with the bills of the cd so a lot of people who don't leave the village at all are people who are not the because our government anymore state kind of declared free agent cation so we just moved to the next state which is my husband's state and the reason why we picked this village is because we have trusted relations who can help us mon satellite there first off you said to the governor of the state where your husband comes from he declared free education does that mean that in other places they don't have free public education yes actually it's  why we decided to go to my husband's state and help the next batch of fifty students how much we're going to give a scholarship how much isn't it costs about three hundred dollars a year to closely with the people who know this kids my husband and i my son we leave here so we need to walk with the villagers themselves because they will tell you this two people are poor but this one is the other person or this child has been out of school for so long so please if you can start with this one will want to recruit fifty students we might get you know five hundred applications of our keeping it so it takes walking with the people from that particular village should know who to peak and e time we'll be able to give modern fifty but when we started the scholarship program in two thousand and eight one of the things we decided is we were not we cannot afford to buy more than we can chew we want to make sure that those kids  kings typically tied to western europe but i've not heard of keynes they're one of my missing we call them kings because we have a lot of chips on the of them in our under their by coming from the road your really so every culture has a different way of doing it so we try sometimes it is kind of insulting to call it a king chief because there are so many other like musicians that you know when we do our programs we have to have on the ground of musicians that will walk with because they know how to do this programs most of the time what we do is fund these programs and  the phone which is wonderful and used to be that having a telephone in your house was just for the region well but it's just a blessing to be able to communicate with people no matter whe they are we started out the show with an introduction of you saying that you are a person who knows what you're doing so how do you and duty chukwu how do you know what you do just i just  mission that drives us every day it was just exciting to know that you are helping change the lives of millions of people all over the world just by showing up in a war it doesn't matter what you do with your typing an e mail or whether difference in their lives so be in their help prepare me to tackle this next phase of my life there were able to build very strong partnerships and very strong support from colleagues as an employee of doing so much all over the world and most of them are being captured on the databases but the things that we do through the money that comes from the matching fund might never be captured but millions of people are being helped because we have you know  this so we've talked a little bit about what you do in education let's talk about health care and poverty alleviation now with mission africa by the way again we're going to be putting the website up on the screen several times throughout the show  it seems to me that education health care and poverty alleviation all works together and how i mean but those are huge things how can you provide for all three of those well the thing is we we just believe that you you just do what you one village at a time i saw a rather help people from one village down wait until i can help the entire country you know so that that's what we do we do free medical outreach is bike i said before we fund them to where the eye doctor you know if they need to see somebody to test the blood sugar things like that so people are very appreciative because normally people don't go to the hospital we don't know physicians we don't have a yearly checkup most times people don't go to the hospital they are carried to the hospital because they way they seek they're so sick that relations have to take them to the hospital you're already carrying water you're kenya at least for now and maybe others down the road is your theory of your work in the other countries the same as it is nigeria kind of chile that's what makes it mission africa unique because the passion to walk in this country's comments from the citizens of that country my husband and i like i said our originally from nigeria so we have the passion to help our people the people where reaching the people their lives  that we help even if it's one child at a time or one village at a time so a lot of it was there why this is really why this contrail why not in this country we want you know africans who are here you know to be able to join forces and be able to help our people because you hear over and over again when you leave to come to the states they tell you don't forget us not forget us and it's a choice you have to make you know we choose not to forget that is why we work and the adults africa and run to families because you have to send money to the kids in the village if you have it you have to say we leave an extended family relation in a system you have to send money anyway to people in your village who education your parents the pain from the time you get into school sometimes you have kids that you know you have students that as old as twenty five jenny sic this just struggling to finish high school because you go when your  if they can't afford it then then you as a child don't get to go to school and so then the cycle of poverty just worse and worse and that's why arse why are people poor there like you said when people don't have joy and other siblings to go through high school and finish you know it was a very slim chance but when she got the mission africa scholarship she finished high school she is a good graduate now and she has a bright future we have another one hundred m is gene parents died when she was very very little and she was left with a single single young lady to take care of that so for hard to go to school or finish at the time and she was the primary caregiver for the rest of the family so that i had no hope of going to school somebody recommended this to moni and she is currently one of our students and she's doing well in health care you know we have been able to send people straight to the hospital because just testing their blood sugar artists in their book treasure you find out that they are so sick that they might just drop dead or have a stroke without even knowing it and because we don't have success stories and we don't write here on we don't call them failures we call them success stories yet to be so do you have some of those too yes i have some of those like i keep saying over and over  forward to building a hospital it is very very close to a hat with very passionate about it because it's just for kids to die from preventable disease we have to have a place where they can go and get their immunization early detection of cancer is not supposed to be something just for the rich and wealthy issue be something that people have access to mission africa hospital will be able to give people medical treatments without waiting for them to register for us to be for us because that is how it works over there sometimes people literally died at the reception of the hospital because they're not able to pay  schools and we make sure they have everything they need to go to school and finish but we have no control over what they're lending we have no control over the quality of the education they're getting some of them they go through schools with us having benches to sit on some of them don't have you know plumbing in their schools some of them don't have a roof on their schools but at least with mission africa scholarship they go through school and they graduate well we have our own school at least we can monitor that w is because their parents cannot afford to send them to school due to no and so we have hundreds of applications just to recruit fifty so the ones that we get and we work very closely with the tell us this one needs it more this one needs that is how we do our screening and we picked this kid so we have never encountered kids who we are forcing to go to school or giving scholarship what happens is when they get th scholarships they walk extra had to make sure they deserve it we get a copy of their report cards every time we only have about a minute i have left but the main thing that i want to ask you is that five years from now if you to be able to attract professionals medical professionals educators to go with us and see how they can help those who want to do that on a consistent basis actually we have a team that will be going in on a shuttle missions trip  here we're looking forward to tracking that story thank you very much for being with us as men and thirty two crew from mission africa if you have questions or if you want to help go to the web site you'll learn how to take care