My Supports

To me, support means to give active help and encouragement to someone.  It could be money, helpful advice, voluntary work, and so on.

The factors within my daily environment that are supportive to me are: Weekly minder – in the person of my mother who helps to take care of my nine year old boy by monitoring his getting ready for school in the morning and his coming back in the afternoon, ensuring the completion of his assignment, I monitor him on weekends.  This has been beneficial to me in that I am able to concentrate and more relaxed at work, without which I would not have been able to cope because I leave home by 5.30am and school resumes 8.am, his sister is in the boarding school and my husband works on the rig (2 weeks on and off at intervals), therefore, without this support, it would have been the little boy and myself at home.  Staff bus – helps to transport me to and from work every day (Monday to Friday) amidst terrible traffic - 4hrs per trip.  This is highly beneficial because I always have some minutes nap on the way going and do some of my assignments on the way back, therefore, without this support I would have to join public transport which will definitely make the journey cumbersome and uneventful.  Computer – helps me to organize my thought and submit my daily job on time.  This is beneficial to me because it helps to complete my job timely with less stress because I always have a whole number of deadline jobs to attend to on daily basis while attending to customers on phone and e-mail, some even come personally to get information. Without this support I would have stayed longer on jobs and this would have affected my daily output.  Food storage – freezer helps to keep the food ready to eat.  This is beneficial because I always prepare food for the week and keep, when I get back from work I bring the preferred food out of the freezer and warm.  Without this I would have to go to market on daily basis and cook daily after going through the daily terrible traffic.  Power generating plant – helps to keep the freezer working with the incessant absence of national electricity. The benefit of this is that it produces power for the freezer because we seldom have electricity in this part of Nigeria.  Without this support, it would have been the same as the food storage.  Daily devotional – helps to keep me balanced through studying and meditating on the word of God.  This is beneficial to me as it invigorates my spiritual life which keeps me sound and balanced, without which I would have been overwhelmed by the happenings all around.  On-line studying – study on early childhood helps to keep me more readily alert on my environment and keeps me abreast of current happenings within families. This is beneficial to me as I am now able to give a more assured professional advice to the suffering families as a result of inadequacies in some areas of upbringing.  If any or all of these are gone, definitely the benefit(s) would be gone too and saddle me with the challenge(s) therein.  I honestly would not want to think of a life without any or all of these supports!

The challenge I chose to imagine is not having a place of work after graduation and the thoughts I have with regard to supports I would want and need are – having accommodation; getting capital to start business of my own.  The factors within my daily environment that would be supportive to me are; parental/family support for immediate necessary things (which should be for a short time before we start getting on each other’s nerves). Without this support, I envisage a feeling of emptiness that would make life unbearable. Societal/community support – this is to help in providing adequate jobs for people in order to provide means of living without which life would be miserable. Describe what you see as the potential benefits of these supports. How difficult would it be to exist without these supports? The absence of these supports would create a negative impact in my life and the way I relate with people generally.