IFENDU, in Igbo language, means ‘the light of life, ‘and signifies the saving light of awareness. Ifendu For Women's Development (IFENDU) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization founded by Rose Uchem in the spirit of the congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary whose originating charism is the promotion of gender parity in family life by providing for African women access to the (then exclusive) world of education. IFENDU came into existence out of the realization that although many Nigerian women have received formal school education, pioneered by Holy Rosary Sisters since 1928 and some have acquired higher education, formal education alone without corresponding changes in society's attitude towards women has not lifted the cultural, social and economic burdens that women bear (Uchem, R., N., 2001, Overcoming women's subordination, p. 251).

IFENDU came into existence to fill this gap and provide the necessary social and gender education for justice. IFENDU has been in operation since 2002 but it gained the status of a registered charity (no. 16, 525) with the Corporate Affairs Commission, Abuja, in March, 2004. IFENDU' is vision-driven in character and has a five-member board of trustees. It addresses issues of women's human identity and seeks to create the necessary awareness on women's assigned subordinate status in relation to men and to change this to that of co-equality. IFENDU envisions a new world in which women's full human identity is acknowledged both in theory and in practice; men and women are valued equally and work together harmoniously as co-equal partners; where gender equality is understood not as biological uniformity but as equal opportunities. IFENDU'S mission in a world where a three-year-old ‘man' is accorded more human dignity than a thirty-year-old woman, all in the name of culture and tradition, is to educate women, men and youth to dismantle oppressive cultural and religious systems that undermine women's full human status and to promote their full participation in all spheres of life on a basis of co-equality with men.