FIWON works with informal workers and organisations — delivering civic education, leadership training, campaigns, legal services and cooperative solutions to strengthen livelihoods and secure rights.
FIWON combines organizing, education, legal advocacy, cooperative development and strategic partnerships to build power and improve livelihoods for informal workers across Nigeria.
Most Informal workers lack an awareness of their citizenship rights. This makes it possible for state agents and some privileged non – state actors to subject informal workers to unnecessary harassment and extortion. FIWON devotes a lot of its resources to continuous civic and trade union education.
FIWON carries out regular leadership training among the leaders and activists of informal workers and their organizations, in order to hone the skills of these leaders for better representation of their members.
FIWON continuously organizes informal workers across the identified 28 sectors and sub-sectors of the informal economy. Special attention is devoted to sectors that are not organized at all (such as the street vending and domestic work sectors) or have very rudimentary organization (such as the waste picking sector.) The current initiative of direct e-registration of FIWON members is an added boost to FIWON’s organizing.
FIWON engages in specific campaigns on behalf of its members. Key among these are the campaign against demolition of informal housing in Abuja, July 2012, campaign against eviction of informal workers from their work clusters and markets on a continuous basis especially in Lagos and a few other Nigerian cities, the campaign against street vending in 2015, the campaign for social protection coverage of informal workers with a Bill presented to the National Assembly in 2014, Campaign against the ban of okada (motor cycle taxis|)in the inner routes of Lagos, etc., etc. These campaigns have earned FIWON enormous credibility among informal workers.
FIWON makes expansive use of available alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to help redress cases of human rights infractions frequently suffered by informal workers. Scores of cases, especially involving domestic workers over arbitrary termination of employment have been successfully settled this way. FIWON also engages in litigation and legislative advocacy geared towards review of some draconian laws enacted by some state governments not favourable to informal workers, and inimical to the principle of inclusive, sustainable development.
FIWON Cooperatives Society was launched in 2017 to deal with the challenge of the ever-present need of members to access affordable loans to promote their businesses. While existing micro finance banks impose incredible interest rates, some as high as 300% per annum, the commercial banks remain no go areas for most of our members. Social insurance services such as Health Insurance, Equipment Purchase, Assets and Property acquisition, business support services, renewable energy acquisition are some of the services facilitated through the Cooperative Society.
FIWON partners a number of local and international organizations in pursuance of its objectives. These include the Streetnet International, a Global Union Federation of street vendors and informal workers based in South Africa, the Women in Informal Economy Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), based in Manchester, England, the International Labour Organization, ILO, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, FES, and GIZ, both German development organizations, the American Center for International Labour Solidarity among others. FIWON is also on the Board of he National Productivity Center, Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity, a Member of the Steering Committee against Child Labour of the ILO and Lagos State Government etc.
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