We walk with children and young people in Plateau and Kaduna States, where poverty and displacement have closed the door on school, work, and safety. Education, skills, and steady care open it again.
To empower young Nigerians to rise above poverty and create their own futures, through skill development, education, and mindset transformation.
A Nigeria where poverty is no longer a hindrance to the dreams and aspirations of any young person.
Children from primary school age and young people up to 24, living in poverty or displaced by conflict. Also the families hosting displaced relatives, and female-headed and child-headed households. Children sit inside our commitment, not beside it.
Plateau and Kaduna States, in Nigeria's Middle Belt. We begin in Bokkos, then Barkin Ladi and Riyom in Plateau, and Chikun, Kajuru and Kaura in Kaduna.
School costs, catch-up classes, market-matched skills training, psychosocial care, and community partnership, held together by selection criteria we publish in advance and outcomes we measure and report.
Plateau is shaped by farmer and herder conflict. Kaduna is shaped by banditry and kidnapping. Displaced families in both are absorbed into other people’s homes rather than camps, which is why most humanitarian assistance never reaches them.
The International Organization for Migration asks every displacement-affected community why its children are not in school. Schools exist. Money does not.
Share of displacement-affected locations naming each barrier, Plateau then Kaduna. IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix, Round 19, January to February 2026.
44,390 people displaced across 188 locations in 16 of 17 local government areas. Only five of those locations are camps. Amnesty International recorded 2,630 people killed and 167 rural communities attacked between May 2023 and May 2025.
107,580 people displaced across 408 locations in 22 of 23 local government areas, and not one formal camp among them. Kaduna recorded 123 kidnapping incidents in the year to June 2025, the second highest in Nigeria.
Neither state appears among UNICEF’s eight priority states for 2026, and the United Nations response plan for Nigeria is built around the north east. Across all 596 displacement-affected locations assessed in Plateau and Kaduna, not one reported a site management agency, and around seven in ten reported no assistance services of any kind.
Each program addresses a different lever of poverty for children and young people, so the change lasts after we leave the room.
Within thirty days of a displacement we deliver learning materials and dignity kits, support the host households absorbing displaced families, and repair damaged classrooms. A child’s schooling then breaks for weeks rather than years.
School levies, uniforms, books and materials for children who would otherwise drop out, plus nine-month catch-up classes for over-age children, aligned with the State Universal Basic Education Board so completers move into formal grades.
Market-matched vocational training and apprenticeships for young people aged 15 to 24, ending in a recognised trade certificate, with tools and six months of coaching after graduation. Local demand decides which trades open.
Group activities for children, caregiver support groups, psychological first aid, resilience and financial literacy. Fewer than one in twenty displaced communities in these two states has any psychosocial support at all.
Community coalitions choose where a learning centre opens, when classes run, and who facilitates. Partnerships with local businesses, state agencies and interfaith peace committees carry the rest.
Engaging policymakers on education, child protection and social protection budgets, and on the recognition of host-community displacement in national planning, using evidence we collect ourselves.
Helping Hands was born out of a personal journey. Our founder, Joseph Tobias, grew up in Northern Nigeria amidst hunger, hopelessness, and abandonment, branded with the label of having "no future ambition." What carried him out of that darkness was a deep faith, the power of education, and a community of friends and strangers who showed up with scholarships, encouragement, and hope.
Today, Helping Hands offers that same kind of support to young Nigerians the system has written off. We believe that with the right opportunities, resources, and community backing, every young person can overcome adversity and step into the fullness of who they were created to be.
We do not hand out aid and walk away. We walk alongside a child or a young person from first contact through learning, into work, into community.
Selection criteria are published before selection happens, and they describe circumstance rather than identity: out of school for twelve months, displaced since a stated date, child-headed household.
School costs and catch-up classes for children. Vocational training, certification and tools for young people. Psychological first aid and group care running alongside both.
We open doors with local employers, business owners, and partner organisations so the skill gained becomes income earned, and we measure that income at six and twelve months, never at graduation.
We report attrition and dropout alongside completion, and we name the assumptions that failed. Uniform success across every indicator is a signal in the wrong direction.
Three doors in. Every one of them changes a life. Our published unit costs sit inside the strategy playbook, so you always know what a gift buys.
₦5,000 buys a term of exercise books and pens. ₦60,000 carries one child through a full school year. ₦450,000 takes a young person through the full skills pathway, tools included.
Companies, foundations, and faith communities. Collaborate with us on training, internships, and grants that reach children and young people who need them.
Bring your time, trade, or expertise. Mentor a young person, lead a workshop, or help us run an outreach event.
Our five-year plan for 2027 to 2031: what we intend to achieve, where, at what cost in naira and dollars, the standards we work to, and the conditions we set ourselves before each stage of growth. Every figure is sourced.
Write to us about partnership, volunteering, scholarship sponsorship, or to share a story. We respond personally.
