“Many villages here are in a serious struggle to get out of the poverty cycle created by the civil war,” says the founder of ICA, a rural school in Nigeria. “I am a living witness. I am from a family of nine; the first five of us have no formal education.”

“This is very common. If we didn’t have this school in this village, 80% of these kids may not have a formal education either.”

He himself knows the opportunities unlocked by going to school. Despite the desperate poverty of his family, he was helped by benefactors to attend school, going on to graduate and pursue further study overseas. Now, he’s investing that gift back into his own community in Nigeria with a school that offers quality education to children who otherwise would miss out because of poverty.

Crossroads has worked with ICA in different ways across many years, including shipments of goods and matches through Global Hand. Our UK office helped ICA by matching them with a donation of school uniforms from a UK school which was redesigning their uniforms and wanted to donate them to a charitable cause. A second Nigerian NGO, too, was the happy recipient of 500 school uniforms donated from a UK school.

“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to donate these uniforms,” said the school. “We are absolutely delighted that they are going to be used again. We hope the children who wear them will like that the uniforms come with the best wishes of friends in England.”