The civil society mapping forum held on October 21, 2016 at Bolton White Hotel, Abuja, organized by DFID (PERL), basically brought civil society groups from various part of the country together to deliberate and share experiences of what they do and how they can work with other society groups that have the same thematic work area. To this effect, various civil society organizations were in attendance including Connected Development (CODE).

PERL is about service delivery and is divided into three aspects which are as follows: ARC work with government, ECP engage citizen with government and LEAP looks at the lessons from ECP to enable government use the lesson to achieve a goal.

Furthermore, there was a group interactive session that enables civil society groups to share what they do in details and the breakout sessions covering thematic areas such as good governance, corruption, budget, education, health, environment, agriculture using various approach like advocacy capacity building, publicity, research and to mention by a few, enable groups to identify and network with groups that have same objectives. In addition, effective ways for citizens to engage with government was suggested using the Freedom of Information Act to enable citizens hold government accountable and to promote transparency.

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”– Sydney J. Harris

An average Nigerian work 9 hours/day, 47 hours /week and we barely have time to rest, we are always in a hurry to get things done, in a hurry even on the highway. The question that comes to mind is: Why the hurry? Where are we really rushing to?

But how many times do we take out time to check our health or even rest, slow down to think and not overwork ourselves. The Nigerian watch revealed that  75% of Nigerians fall sick due to work stress. We visit hospitals most times when the ailment is at a critical stage and often times most ailment are work stress related because we do not take out time to relax. We rather just get drugs from a roadside pharmacy when we have the slightest symptoms, thereby worsen the case that ought to have a proper diagnosis.

Every job has stress and at some point we feel the work pressure and this stress can occur in different forms like trying to fulfill a challenging obligation or trying to meet a deadline. But when work stress persist then this can be harmful to our health. Work stress can contribute to health issues such as headache, sleep disorder, difficulty in concentrating, short temper, it can also weaken the immune system amongst other noticeable symptoms.

Record shows that some persons deal with stress using different unhealthy mechanisms ranging from abusing drugs and smoking or even taking alcohols, overeating or unhealthy eating and other unhealthy coping mechanisms.

From my personal observation, I discovered that more Doctors visit and serious illness are linked to work stress, most times instead of visiting the Hospital for a proper check up, most people just prefer to buy drugs from a roadside drug seller or we buy drugs from the chemist in our neighborhood not minding the fact that they are not trained.

My advice, according to psychologists, that we adopt some coping mechanisms like make the most of our break, even if it’s 10 minutes of our busy schedule and this have proven to help refresh our mental outlook, try to take a brief walk or just interact with colleagues and always walk away when you are angry (mental regroup) or my favorite, sit quietly with your eyes closed and take a deep breath.

We should also set reasonable standards, learn to work together with colleagues to achieve needed change in the organisation, also the overall productivity of the organisation will increase and this will improve our health as well.

Next time you are feeling stressed, take time to listen to your body, just rest and save yourself extra stress of hospital runs, a Philosopher said “To go slow is to go fast. I think that applies to everything in Life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with less stress.”

A good design for visualizing information for advocacy is one that achieves its intended purpose within a network of cultural, social and political interactions.

To use visual information for advocacy, we have to look at the base of interaction, that is the network of people who engage with the issue in different ways. The way it can be deployed through a network are also affected by the use of and access to technology.

There are four elements involved, information, design, technologies and networks. They should be considered in every visual campaign. Whether we are presenting a narrative of health, girl child education, violence against police or freedom of expression or even documenting trends of corruption, it best to use the available technology in order to deliver the necessary information in its appropriate form or design to the relevant networks of people. The combination will determine the communicative power of the images we create and ultimately, the effectiveness of our campaigns.

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