A group of Nigerian Youth have come together to launch a campaign tagged Mask4All in a bid to deliver one million free home-made face masks for free to the most vulnerable communities in Nigeria before the end of May 2020 and a four month target of a total of 50million face masks by the end of August 2020.
In a statement released at the launch of the campaign on April 20, 2020, Joshua Adeloye the project manager explained that the project starts with 250 young tailors who have volunteered to deliver one thousand face masks each weekly and a total of One million face masks by the end of May, 2020.
“Through this volunteer process, the group will be able to produce and distribute good quality locally made double ply face masks at about 40% of the market price as a face mask directly sourced from the network of volunteer tailors will enable us produce and distribute the face masks at N250.00 per mask as against the market price of N400 and N500 per mask” said Joshua.
He further said that “to be able to meet our target of 50million face masks by the end of August 2020, we will be engaging a total of 100,000 volunteer tailors, this means that we are on one side creating jobs while also preventing the spread of the coronavirus”.
Adeloye however added that the team has reached out to some friends asking that they share the idea on their social media pages.
Lanre Oyegbola, Strategic Team Lead who also spoke at the event said “We shall crowd-fund the payment for the masks to ensure they keep producing at marginal profit against the going market price of N400 and N500, we now have young tailors who have volunteered for this cause in 20 states and the FCT but our aim is to cover the entire country and make the face masks available for everybody”.
When asked how the group intends to distribute the face masks during the present lockdown in some states in Nigeria, Joshua Adeloye said “we are also recruiting 50,000 Young Nigerians who will volunteer as Boots-On-Ground agents, these group of volunteers will help with the movement of the face masks from the producers (tailors) to donors or benefitting communities”. He then appealed for support from well meaning Nigerians to support this cause by making a generous donation to the Mask4All account on the Quickraiz crowdfunding platform to support the project as they move to raise the first 250million Naira needed to deliver the first One million facemasks.
