“Healing comes when things are getting better,” she said. Lost in deep thought and oblivious to where she was, the look on her face was that of a survivor; a reflection of someone who had passed through so much and yet came out stronger.

Today, she stopped over at our corporate head office. The story of how she moved from her “carved-out passage” which she called a home, to a more decent place she can now call her own is a true reflection of “endless possibilities”.

A single mother of three children, Patricia hails from Imo State, south eastern part of Nigeria. Though she spent most of her growing up years in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, she later moved to Lagos immediately after she got married in 1995.

“I got married immediately after my secondary school education due to pressure from my parents. My mother, most especially, couldn’t get over the excitement of seeing me getting married. I never had an opportunity to get to know who I was being married to, as he always communicated with my dad. And as a result of the challenges which our marriage faced, we had to go our separate ways after a while.”

“My elder sister who saw what I was passing through after my marriage packed up asked me to relocate to Abuja. This I did in 2009 and I had to live with my younger sister and her family who lived in a satellite town close to the FCT for about one year with my three children.”

In the quest of getting to own a place that she could call hers, Patricia moved out of her younger sister’s place after one year as she and her children weren’t getting the comfort that they desired.

With her meagre savings from the sale of fairly used items, she rented a place in a suburb of Abuja. After a while, unable to pay the rent alongside fending for herself and three growing children, she had to find a smaller place to rent.

The place which was located in a congested environment could be described as an enclosed passage which was meant to be a service area in between several rooms. This was done by the landlord in other to generate more money from the already crowded property. The fact that a drainage serving the other rooms ran directly in front of the enclosed space did not deter the landlord, neither did it bother her as all she wanted was a place to keep her belongings and provide shelter for herself and her children.

“It was at this point that a colleague told me about how the Fuller Center provides homes for people in need and then urged me to apply. I didn’t take it seriously as I had never been lucky when it comes to bidding for items. But I got lucky and today, I own a house of my own.”

“My first experience at the Fuller Center was an interesting one, as the peaceful, serene, green and peaceful environment reminded me of my growing up years at the Government Reserved Area where I grew up,” she said.

“The feeling of owning a Fuller house is a nice one, but most importantly, the price of the house is a true reflection of its mission statement, which is the provision of affordable housing for people in need on a sustainable basis.”