Ground to Stand On
Our plan for 2027 to 2031. Who we serve, where we work, what we intend to achieve, and what it costs in naira and in dollars. We begin with one local government area and no paid staff, and we grow by earning the right to grow.
The vision and mission have not moved. The ground under the people we serve has.
Vision
A Nigeria where poverty is no longer a hindrance to the dreams and aspirations of any young person.
Mission
To empower young Nigerians to rise above poverty and create their own futures through skill development, education, and mindset transformation.
1. Children are now named alongside youth
Our earlier framing set the age band at fifteen to twenty-four. A fifteen-year-old who has never held a pencil did not arrive at that point at fifteen. She arrived at six, when nobody paid her levies, and again at nine, when the harvest needed her hands more than the classroom did. Our work now begins with children, and young people remain at the centre of it.
2. Middle Belt crisis response is now a named priority
Displacement, school closure and family separation in Plateau and Kaduna shape everything else we do there. Crisis response is a programme in its own right rather than an occasional reaction, and displaced families are absorbed into other households rather than camps, which is why most assistance never reaches them.
Schools exist. Money does not.
The International Organization for Migration asks every displacement-affected community why its children are not in school. The answers reorder most assumptions about this crisis.
Share of displacement-affected locations naming each barrier, Plateau then Kaduna. IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix, Round 19, data collected 6 January to 7 February 2026, covering 188 locations in Plateau and 408 in Kaduna.
Schools are reachable
Formal education is within reach of 587 of 596 assessed locations. The binding constraint is household cost, not distance and not the absence of a building.
Repair, do not rebuild
72 per cent of Plateau locations and 60 per cent of Kaduna locations report a slightly damaged school. Only 2 and 6 per cent report one destroyed.
What nobody has measured
There is no published out-of-school figure for either state, no state-level child malnutrition prevalence, and no learning-outcome data for displaced children. We treat those gaps as work, and collect baselines at enrolment.
Two states, two different crises.
Plateau State
Driven by farmer and herder conflict and communal violence. 44,390 people displaced across 188 locations in 16 of 17 local government areas, with only five of those locations being camps.
Amnesty International recorded 2,630 people killed and 167 rural communities attacked between May 2023 and May 2025. In November 2025 the state closed all primary and day schools over security fears.
Kaduna State
Driven by banditry and kidnapping. 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, second highest in Nigeria. In July 2026 the state began covering meals and approved charges in public boarding schools, which shifts the barrier here from fees toward uniforms, materials and transport.
Why a small local organisation belongs here
Neither Plateau nor Kaduna appears among UNICEF's eight priority states in its 2026 humanitarian appeal, and the United Nations response plan for Nigeria is built around Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. Across all 596 displacement-affected locations assessed in these two states, not one reported a site management agency, and 70 to 74 per cent reported no assistance services of any kind. A five-year interfaith peacebuilding programme covering both states closed in September 2025, leaving trained community peace committees without a funder. This is a gap a rooted local organisation is built to fill.
Five pillars of work
Each pillar names the standard behind it, so a donor's due diligence team knows where to look.
Middle Belt Crisis Response
Displacement here is absorbed into households, not concentrated into camps. Camp-shaped assistance does not reach these families, which is why the work suits an organisation living in the same communities.
- Emergency learning and dignity package within thirty days of a displacement, replacing the school items burned or left behind.
- Host household support, because a family taking in eleven relatives has become a humanitarian actor without funding.
- Small, fast school rehabilitation: roofs, doors, windows, latrines and desks.
- A standing response fund, held unallocated, released by trustee decision within seventy-two hours of a verified incident where we already work.
Learning Restored
Household cost is the top-named barrier in 80 per cent of Plateau locations. We attack it directly, and we bring back the children already lost. School support covers levies, uniform, books and materials, a bag, and a transport contribution for one child for one full year.
Nine-month catch-up cycles serve over-age children out of school for a year or more, condensed against the national curriculum and aligned with the State Universal Basic Education Board so completers are placed into formal grades. Exam fee support covers WAEC, NECO and JAMB candidates.
Skills and Livelihoods
Standalone vocational training has a weak record. The evidence points to certification, market fit, and follow-up money as the three things making the difference.
- Market assessment first. Local demand decides which trades open, before any trainee is recruited.
- Apprenticeship with certification. The Nigerian apprenticeship model gives embedded market access at low cost, and its weakness is the missing certificate, so every placement ends in a recognised trade test.
- Tools plus coaching plus consumption support. A starter kit handed over alone gets sold. Where we cannot afford all three, we fund fewer young people properly.
- Income measured at six and twelve months after completion, never at graduation.
Mindset and Wellbeing
Fewer than one in twenty displacement-affected locations in either state has any psychosocial support. Trained volunteers run group activities, social and emotional learning, caregiver support groups, psychological first aid, and safe spaces with registers and supervision ratios. They never diagnose, counsel, run trauma narration, or manage a child in crisis beyond immediate safety and referral.
Nothing starts without a referral pathway. Before any activity opens we hold a named, telephoned list of the clinicians, hospitals and social welfare offices we refer into. Pooled evidence across five humanitarian settings shows child-friendly spaces help children aged six to eleven and do close to nothing for adolescents, so teenagers get separate programming built around skills, peer leadership and sport.
Partnership and Advocacy
The largest evidence base from northern Nigeria on non-formal education, a programme reaching more than 80,000 learners through 56 local organisations and 67 community coalitions, found that genuine devolved decision-making drove the results. Communities chose their own centre locations, schedules and facilitators. We copy that.
State bodies are engaged before we start rather than after: SUBEB and the Agency for Mass Education on curriculum and certification, the state peace bodies on context and early warning, and the Plateau State Resettlement Task Force on returns. We publish learning gain and formal-school transition, the two things the largest northern Nigerian programme did not measure.
What we intend to achieve by 2031
We begin with no paid staff, one local government area, and a founder-led volunteer team. These targets are built upward from that, not downward from an ambition.
| Measure | 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | By 2031 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local government areas of operation | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| Children carried through a school year | 60 | 150 | 300 | 500 | 800 | 800 |
| Catch-up learning centres running | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 9 | 9 |
| Learners completing a catch-up cycle | 40 | 80 | 160 | 240 | 360 | 880 |
| Young people completing the skills pathway | 15 | 35 | 60 | 95 | 140 | 345 |
| Children in group psychosocial activities | 150 | 400 | 800 | 1,300 | 2,000 | 4,650 |
| Trained volunteers on the roster | 12 | 25 | 45 | 70 | 100 | 100 |
| Paid staff | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
| Annual budget, naira | ₦18.4m | ₦47.0m | ₦102.0m | ₦191.8m | ₦336.2m | ₦695.4m |
| Annual budget, US dollars | $13,902 | $35,633 | $77,246 | $145,289 | $254,732 | $526,802 |
Children carried through a school year is a live enrolment figure with children retained year to year, so the final column is the number of unique children reached across five years rather than a sum. Catch-up learners, skills graduates and psychosocial participants are cumulative. Conversions use ₦1,320 to US$1, the Central Bank of Nigeria rate on 8 September 2026. Budgets carry a 15 per cent compounding price adjustment against Nigerian inflation, which stood at 15.43 per cent in the July 2026 release.
Growth gates
Each year's expansion is conditional. If a gate is not met, we hold at the current scale and fix what is broken rather than adding a location. This is published so a donor is able to hold us to it.
Before opening a second local government area
First annual return filed. Twelve months of bookkeeping with reconciled monthly bank statements reviewed by a trustee. Baseline and endline data on every year-one participant. At least 70 per cent of catch-up learners completing the cycle.
Before crossing into Kaduna
A completed market assessment and school-cost survey in the target local government area. A named referral pathway with confirmed telephone contacts. At least one trustee and two volunteers resident in the state.
Before the first paid hire, in 2029
First audited accounts complete. Twelve months of verified outcome data including transition into formal school. Six to twelve months of salary held in reserve before an offer is made. The first hire is a finance and administration officer, not a programme officer.
Before the 2030 and 2031 scale-up
At least one multi-year institutional grant or sub-grant secured. External safeguarding review passed. Published evidence report covering learning gain and formal-school transition. Volunteer attrition below 25 per cent a year.
Published unit costs, in naira first
Every amount below is a real budget line, not a marketing figure. Naira first, because that is the currency the work is paid in.
The second most-named barrier in Kaduna is the absence of school supplies, reported in 61 per cent of displacement-affected locations.
Fewer than one in twenty communities in these two states has any such support at all.
Levies, uniform, books and materials, a bag, and transport. This single item removes the barrier named most often in Plateau.
Delivered within thirty days, so schooling breaks for weeks rather than years.
Market-matched training, a recognised trade certificate, tools, and six months of coaching after graduation.
Forty over-age children, two paid facilitators, materials, supervision, and placement into formal grades at the end.
Recognised as a founding partner of that location, with direct reporting on every child in it.
Monthly partnership
Recurring gifts are worth more than their face value, because they let us commit to a nine-month teaching cycle before the money is in the account.
₦5,000 a month (US$4) keeps one child in school each year. ₦25,000 a month (US$19) covers five children, or one skills graduate every eighteen months. ₦100,000 a month (US$76) covers most of a catch-up centre's annual cycle.
What partners receive
- A half-yearly report giving numerator and denominator, with attrition and dropout reported alongside completion.
- Named disclosure of which assumptions failed and what changed as a result.
- Our safeguarding policy, financial controls summary, and trustee register on request, at any time.
- An open invitation to visit a learning centre, subject only to a security check.
Safeguarding, measurement, and money
Children come before our reputation
A written policy approved by the trustees, applying to volunteers, partners, drivers and visitors. Three references spoken to by phone or in person, never email alone. A signed self-declaration, which makes concealment an offence in itself. No volunteer works alone and unobserved with a child.
We will never present an absence of reported cases as evidence of safety. Under-reporting indicates weak systems. We report concerns raised and how each was handled, and commission an external review every three years.
Outputs are not outcomes
Outputs are what we produced. Outcomes are the change in a child's life. Reporting the first as though it were the second is the most common failure in documents of this kind.
Our highest-value indicators are the share of catch-up completers who transition into formal school, verified at three months, the share of skills graduates earning at six and twelve months, and the share of psychosocial referrals that actually reach a service, verified.
Controls with very few people
Dual signatories, with the founder not among the two required above a set threshold. Two people count any cash together and both sign. Bank statements reach a trustee unopened, before the bookkeeper sees them. Organisational money is held entirely separately from any personal or congregational account.
Annual returns are filed with the Corporate Affairs Commission every year from year one, and tax returns with the Federal Inland Revenue Service regardless of exempt status.
Standards we work to
- Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability, 2024
- Sphere Handbook and the four Protection Principles
- International Child Safeguarding Standards, Keeping Children Safe, 2024
- IASC Six Core Principles on sexual exploitation and abuse
- INEE Minimum Standards for Education, 2024, and its Nigeria contextualisation
- Accelerated Education Working Group, Ten Principles for Effective Practice
- IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings
- Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action
- Do No Harm framework, CDA Collaborative Learning Projects
- CALP Network minimum standards for cash and voucher assistance
Where the numbers are contested
Every figure in this strategy carries a source and a date. Several of the most-quoted numbers about Nigeria are disputed, and a document intended for donors is stronger for saying so.
Figures we present with both numbers
The Kuriga school abduction of March 2024 is given as 137 by the Kaduna State Government and 287 by school and community sources. Out-of-school children nationally is 10.2 million in UNICEF's most recent published figure, while figures up to 18.9 million circulate on broader definitions. Displacement in Plateau appears as 44,390 in the January 2026 assessment round, and higher in press reports that count returnees alongside displaced people.
Figures we decline to use
Nigeria's official youth unemployment rate of 6.5 per cent counts anyone working one hour a week as employed, and quoting it would mislead. The informal employment rate of 93 per cent, from the same survey table, describes the labour market these young people actually enter. We also decline to publish a trauma prevalence figure: the two available studies differ almost twentyfold, and neither is current and local. Our case for psychosocial work rests on documented service absence instead.
Principal sources: IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix, North Central and North West Site Assessment, Rounds 18 and 19. National Bureau of Statistics and OPHI, Nigeria Multidimensional Poverty Index 2022. National Bureau of Statistics, Consumer Price Index July 2026 and Labour Force Survey Q2 2024. Amnesty International reporting on Plateau State and on school abductions in northern Nigeria. SBM Intelligence, The Economics of Nigeria's Kidnap Industry, 2025 and 2026. UNICEF Humanitarian Action for Children Nigeria 2026 and the Nigerian Child 2025 Report. UN OCHA Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025 and 2026. WHO Africa post-attack assessment of Bokkos, Barkin Ladi and Mangu. ACAPS conflict dynamics analysis, November 2025. World Bank Nigeria Poverty and Equity Brief. Central Bank of Nigeria reference rate, 8 September 2026.
Prepared September 2026. Scheduled for review in September 2027 and annually thereafter. Corrections are welcome at hello@helpinghandsnigeria.org.
Partner with us
We are seeking partners for the first learning centre in Bokkos, for the 2028 entry into Kaduna, and trustees with financial, child protection and education backgrounds.