Projects
Inclusive Social Development
Book Donation Drive
Bringing Education to All: Our pop-up book drive supports underfunded schools and provides inclusive learning for mobile children. Through partnerships, we donate books, organize competitions, and enhance local libraries. Explore our impact in Uyo, Nsukka, Delta, and Lagos on Nwuliareads blog and Instagram.
Street Kids Learn
Our flagship programme for street and out-of-school children has empowered hundreds of disadvantaged children. Originally initiated as Streetkids Read, this flagship event targets street children and street girls, estimated to be over 10 million in Nigeria alone by UNICEF. The platform uses innovative approaches to street children’s education and incorporates workshops on various aspects of their lives, including research, entrepreneurship, fundraising, and awareness creation. The focus is on empowering them with essential life skills for a sustainable path, enhancing existing skills, and providing the freedom to make choices. In the past, we have collaborated with Global Shapers, Port Harcourt hub, and Hold my Hands Foundation, Uyo.
Watch past editions on YouTube and read about it on Bellanaija and Nigerian Bulletin,
Project Her Life Matters
We use this project to address challenges in girl-child education, development, and empowerment of young girls, including street girls and girl-child house-helps Given the vulnerability of women and girls due to pervasive social practices with strong gender contexts, the program focuses on education, good health practices, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and skill development. Explore previous editions of Nations News here.
Digital Social Policy and Development
Mobile Tech Kids
In the contemporary era, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a transformative force, positively influencing and empowering vulnerable communities. Despite its significant benefits as it concerns lifelong learning and poverty reduction, access to ICT, particularly for disadvantaged children and young adults, remains a challenge. The socio-economic exclusion faced by traditionally excluded and disadvantaged communities extends to the virtual world, creating a substantial digital divide, especially during prolonged periods such as shocks, pandemics, and disasters when ICT is crucial for delivering social services. Mobile Tech Kids aims to address these challenges by directly engaging with traditionally excluded children and young adults through digital knowledge transfer and providing support for digital infrastructure to facilitate their learning and equip them with skills for future jobs. View the video and pictures of our previous edition here.
Strengthening Capacity in Social Development and Policy
Social Policy Corner
It is an online policy engagement space led by citizens. Social Policy Corner focuses on existing social policies related to education, health, social development, inclusion, urban and rural poverty, gender, youth, rural development, sustainable livelihood, street children, and other policies affecting traditionally excluded citizens such as children, youth, girls, street children, rural dwellers, and urban poor. Engagement occurs from beneficiary, technical, and policymaking perspectives, allowing for citizen-driven problem-to-policy initiatives. It also serves as a platform for setting agendas for new policies on emerging social problems, utilising online public spaces such as Zoom, Twitter, and YouTube for these engagements. Check out our previous editions.
YASSIMP (Young African Scholars in Social Inclusion Mentorship Programme)
YASSIMP is a flagship mentorship programme designed to nurture young talents dedicated to inclusive development and social policy in Africa. This programme was instituted due to the observed gap in the inclusive development ecosystem in Africa – where young people committed to community development and social policy are hindered from accessing global opportunities that will strengthen their skills.
Annually, we issue a call for mentees, and those selected receive mentoring on improved and impactful ways to run their social inclusion projects, self-package their efforts for global opportunities, enhance their capacity through accessing scholarships, and attract funding for their projects.
Financing Social Policy
Blooming Social Pen examines different private and public financing sources such as tax, domestic resource mobilisation, remittances, debt and trade to gain insight into the challenges hindering the sustainable financing of social policies and programmes. In addition, we are also curious about the present social policy financing landscape in Nigeria and Africa. This curiosity extends to our investigating and collaborating on various creative methods for obtaining and administering public finances for social policies. We also draw insights from successful case studies implemented globally. The primary tools for these are research, collaborations, and change advocacy.
