WHAT WE DO
We help needy communities facing serious challenges meet their basic needs and find hope. We assist community workers, provide access to food resources, sponsor educational opportunities for students, provide literacy training, and help with essential medicines and medical supplies. We also protect victims from oppression, support conflict resolution efforts and help achieve strategic outcomes.
BACKGROUND
We were organized in 2005 in response to a plea for help from members of a struggling population in northern Nigeria. Despite its developing status, Nigeria is a country of great need and deprivation. According to 2012 World Bank data, 68 percent of Nigerians live on less than $1.25 per day. In 2020, households were further adversely affected by the economic shock of the COVID pandemic. It is estimated that about 70% of households reduced their food consumption in 2020 as a coping mechanism.
Nigeria has great ethnic diversity, with somewhere between 300 and 427 ethnolinguistic groups. Although all religions are practiced in every region, Islam is concentrated in the north and Christianity in the south. The complex context of ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural divisions sometimes erupts in violence.
In recent years, our target communities have faced additional challenges from the ravages of the militant group Boko Haram. Although active in open terrorism since 2009, things looked at their bleakest in 2014 when Boko Haram declared an Islamic caliphate and openly slaughtered innocents, kidnapped women, captured towns and territory and created a humanitarian crisis with millions of internally displaced persons. Although the Boko Haram threat has been reduced, the violence has continued.
Recently, the dramatic and escalating violence in Nigeria has been characterized as the farmer-herder conflict. Nigerian Christians in the North experience devastating violence, with attacks by armed groups of Islamist Fulani herders resulting in the killing, maiming, dispossession and eviction of thousands. The exact death toll is unknown. A report released in June 2020 by the UK Parliament All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom of Religion or Belief discusses whether the current violence is unfolding genocide and urges the international community to help save the lives of Nigerian citizens and to improve their welfare.
We remain in the middle of the crisis — which has created additional challenges and opportunities to help displaced individuals and families, to alleviate hunger, to save lives and provide hope.
We are responding to a call to help communities living in extreme poverty face tremendous challenges with limited resources. We strive to create meaningful change in the lives of the people we serve. Come join us in this opportunity to do good and provide pathways to hope.
