Education in Emergency

Omoh Alabi joined the InnerCity Mission in January 2013 as the Sponsorship Director and became the organization’s Executive Director in January 2016. Under her leadership its revenue have increased from with over 60% in the past 4 years.She holds numerous leadership positions both locally and nationally  including serving as Director of the Children’s Ministry of the Loveworld Nation, Board of Directors and the Managing Director of the Loveworld Schools International.

She is an avid child Education enthusiast, and has brought her expertise to the InnerCity Mission growth, from strengthening and expanding the Schools to 8 centers, to establishing a Volunteer network that has grown to over 2000 within 2 years. Skillfully, she has coordinated efforts to identify, initiate contact, and cultivate new institutional and major corporate donor relationships with the likes of UNILEVER, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants {ACCA}, SHELL Nigeria who have all supported our Educational program amongst others.

All children, no matter where they live or their circumstances, have the right to quality education. According to UNESCO statistics, 263 million children are out of school. This is equivalent to a quarter of the population of Europe. Most children come from poor, low-income families where the responsibility of their welfare is put on them and many more from displaced countries and communities, mainly due to terrorism, banditry, ethnic conflicts, and recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through the Education in Emergencies Program, we provide quality nursery and primary Education to children from countries and communities facing a violent crisis, natural disasters, or global pandemic absolutely free of charge. With the Education in Emergency program, we bridge the learning gap brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic by providing alternative Education to these children. We provide free learning tools and variety of fun educative activities to engage them mentally, inspiring them to learn.

Education is a basic human right, it has the potential to enable children to gain the life skills and knowledge needed to cope with today's challenges and be agents of their own change. Yet factors such as poverty, violence, and most recently, the COVID 19 pandemic has limited millions of children and young people from getting an education.  Approximately 1.725billion learners globally are affected due to school closures.

One in every five of the world's out-of-school children is in Nigeria. Even though primary Education is free and compulsory, about 10.5 million of the children aged 5-14 years are not in school (UNICEF). In northern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, the picture is bleaker- Boko Haram insecurities have disrupted academic activities, and children are being denied Education and getting out-of-school children back into Education poses a massive challenge.

The direct and indirect costs of schooling impacts low income families at the lower end of the income ladder as parents are forced to substitute child education for child work. With the pandemic, much focus has turned to online learning platforms and many public school indigent children from harsh social and economic divide, are not set up to access or use them.  

The project titled Education in Emergencies is anchored on the need to provide and increase access to learning opportunities for children from low-income households, streets, orphans, and internally displaced communities. 

The InnerCity Mission Network of Schools, started in 2004 with the mantra “Every Child is your Child''. It proposes a scale-up of its in-person educational engagement for inner-city children who do not have ANY access to online learning. In this initiative, specially designed lesson plans and worksheets are packaged weekly and taken to children in their communities.

While virtual learning is preferred, many of the children within the program live in areas with low or no internet connectivity and lack of virtual learning materials hence the  program.

This program will also provide radios in addition to worksheets to as many households as possible, so will be allowed to join the national educational campaign that delivers curriculum-based learning through over 140 radio stations in the country.

The Inner-city Mission Schools have physical schools in six locations across Nigeria catering to over (1600) children, with two centers in Cambodia and India in Asia.

We have started this project, I think with the additional funding we would include the radio based learning 

Through the Free Basic Education Program, the children being impacted are indigent and poor drawn from low-income areas in Lagos, Abia, Imo, and Adamawa states respectively; street children and orphans, children in Emergency Situations most recently those affected by the pandemic.

To better understand their needs-for over 15 years, we have provided a detailed community identification process, where an extensive need assessment is offered to the most vulnerable groups. During this time, we have developed a simple method of selection, support, and reintegration.  As we develop the project, we print out worksheets and purchase reading materials and storybooks to continue to practice. We visit them weekly to review completed sheets and provide a fresh set of reading materials for the following week. Teachers are also on the ground to respond to their questions for a short duration of time.

So far, 1500 children have been and over 5 significant subjects taught. We currently provide psyco-social services to help them deal with their sexual and reproductive health, increasing their awareness and safety consciousness on the growing sexual abuse that has become rampant during this time. We also provide routine health check treating common illnesses like malaria through our health campaign.

Poverty and emergency situations lead to the factors responsible for the high number of out-of-school children in Nigeria. Before the pandemic, there were 13.2 million out-of-school children; the truth is that if Out-of-school children don't go to school in the next five years, they would  produce another 150 million out-of-school children in Nigeria. 

Also, worsening the situation is the pandemic that has restricted almost 50 million children at home without a structured homeschooling system.  Education in Emergency with a combination of the Radio School will reduce the impact of the education emergency necessitated by COVID-19 –and reduce Nigeria’s out-of-school population.  

In December 2004, after the Founder, Rev Dr. Chris Oyakhilome (D.Sc., D.D.) made a profound statement, "Every Child is your Child.’’, we were driven by this mantra to impact the lives of indigent children such as Alice, an impoverished 4-year-old girl living in a run-down community in Lagos, who might not live to celebrate her 5th birthday due to hunger-related issues. She is just as important and worthy as a world leader in a developed country.

Motivated by the need to provide educational opportunities to traditionally excluded children, the Innercity Mission believes that children such as Hauwa, Aisha and Musa in Northeast Nigeria will be most likely used as child soldiers and suicide bombers by the insurgents if they do not access quality education.

Like wealth, so can poverty be passed on in families, children raised in poverty are in danger of repeating the cycle. The programs and interventions of the InnerCity Mission are sustainable solutions that meet the needs of deprived, orphaned, excluded, and vulnerable children in at-risk places, equipping them. By extension, their families with the tools they need to build their lives and positively impact their communities and the country.

I am motivated by the belief that "No child should grow without being allowed to get an education. With over 13 million children in Nigeria are out of school due to poverty and emergency crisis, the crisis will see an additional 20 million children at home without any educational activities.

I am motivated by the need to democratize access to Education irrespective of social class and environmental circumstances. The lack of access to Education is so important to me as I have witnessed the power of educating one child and how it changes the narrative for an entire family. The Education in Emergency project gives me a unique opportunity as with many of our programs to protect the rights of children, especially vulnerable children. Given the recent global happenings and in contrast to their counterparts who continue to access digital learning; it has become more critical than ever that we foster continued learning, so they are not left behind. I am working tirelessly with my team to help children maintain a healthy, regular routine and, most importantly, calm during the crisis. The reality that more and more children already excluded from Education will now be further impacted was genuinely heartbreaking

The Inner City Global Mission has placed its humanitarian footprint-successfully penetrating many countries and territories of the world. Since our inception in 2005, I have led my team to reach over 10 million beneficiaries, executing interventions in over 50 countries.  With a staff strength of 100 people and 1000 volunteers in over 30 countries, we have impacted the lives of  20 million indigent beneficiaries, mostly children around the world in underserved, hard-to-reach communities, from one state in 2005 to over 55 countries in  2020.

15 years ago, the children of the inner city mission schools were only 66 in number, there was little or no awareness of our impact, and parents in the inner city communities did not allow their children to participate in our educational activities. We were grossly understaffed with teachers who were not skilled or motivated. Although our teachers had good intentions, they lacked the qualification and professionalism to deliver quality lessons. Our classes had broken down chairs and doors – the infrastructure was demoralizing for teachers and students as resource mobilization remained a significant issue.

Although faced with this reality, I leveraged the relationships I had built over the years in the educational sector to get the results I wanted.  I took pictures of our surroundings, developed an internal budget totaling the cost of materials required to bring the school up to standard, I showed pictures, and told stories, scheduled meetings with stakeholders requesting sponsorship, partnerships, and in-kind donations.

Within six months, we generated a lot of community support and in-kind donations. Our school received a facelift, with new furniture, uniforms, textbooks, and more. Our children increased to 1620 and we have graduated over 5000 children who continue to excel.

I have demonstrated strong leadership ability by actively leading the inner city mission to launch successful innovative programs and activities. Through my leadership, we currently implement the following programs such as the Back to School campaign, Education in emergencies, Children Centers, Train the trainer initiative, food programs, shelter, orphanage homes, humanitarian relief programs, health care, strengthening livelihoods. We have supported the families of over 20,000 children and launched campaigns that empowered parents to learn and start new businesses with new sources of income.

With tenacity, consistency, and passion, we have launched schools in Lagos, Abia, Owerri, Yola, Cambodia, and Nigeria with IT Centers, vocational learning opportunities, after school reading programs, and so much more.

We have accessed sponsorships from multinationals, and this is a testament to my leadership potential. To dream and find the courage to keep going – continually identifying new opportunities and partnerships that can scale up our impact in different parts of the world.

I hope to reach many more children in the inner city in all parts of the world- replicating a proven strategy that has worked immensely. 

Our project is innovative as currently we are the foremost organization  printing educational worksheets for students in these communities. Working with a large number of volunteers, we go into the inner city and create a safe space where children can learn fun subjects.

In addition, we also provide child mental health support to manage their mental health at this time. 

We teach children on important safety measures they must take to stay away from pedophiles and abusers to also guarantee the overall safety of the child.

Every week, we come back to these communities to access their progress as well as counsel them.

We also understand that the demography of children we serve, cannot afford tablets and have challenge accessing the internet- we will be providing radios to children in these communities so they can listen to ongoing national educational programs.

The Education in emergency program is designed to provide all round solution

I expect our work to have an impact on humanity as early childhood education is known to lay the groundwork for a successful future. The brain develops the majority of its neurons between birth and 3 years old, early childhood education is the period of birth through 8 years old which is the demography of the children we serve. 

It lays the foundation for a child's future development, providing a strong base for lifelong learning and learning abilities, including cognitive and social development. 

Over the past 15 years, our work which is focused on;

1. Providing Free Basic Education to children in (6 locations in Nigeria, India, Cambodia ), which includes a full ICT centers that allows them learn 21st century skills, feeding program, food bank and more
2. We have implemented Education in Emergency in war torn Liberia, South Sudan, victims of insurgency in Nigeria
3. Food Programs that includes a thriving School Feeding Program
4. Family strengthening & livelihood programs that empowers families of the children in the inner city 
5. Adoption programs
6. Orphanage homes and child protection programs that removes children from life threatening situations and empowers them to stay focused in school
7. Skill acquisition programs and many more

has provided all round , well tailored solutions to our  children, their families and communities they come from. Without providing holistic support to these children and their families there is a 90% chance they will drop out of school given their circumstances.

Our theory of change is that when children are provided with all round interventions they stay in school and end up becoming extremely valuable contributors to growth and development.

 It is said that he who opens a school door, closes a prison and for every child who experiences change through our intervention, we have a unique opportunity to not just elevate them from their present circumstance but give them an opportunity for more.

We currently serve - 11,950

In one year , we will serve - 143,400

In five years - 717, 000 and more

Our goal is to scale up our work by building more learning centers in displaced communities. We desire to have more families enrolled in our programs and more out of school children accepted into formal education. These children will be provided with well-rounded support until their University level where we hope they can go on to become active members of society.

Our goals is to set up more ICT centers, build our secondary school so our children can easily transit from nursery and primary education to Secondary education without loosing the quality of education they receive.

We desire to purchase more buses to make it easier for students to commute from the inner cities to school daily  as well as ramp up our feeding program so that more children not only in our school but also in the communities can continue to receive daily meals so they can stay in school.

We plan to leverage testimonials received from the field and the success stories we continue to record from our children. In addition to receiving donations we hope to launch a funding model that allows us generate our own funding. This funding model is one we hope to learn from the partnership with the elevators prize if awarded.

Capacity is a major barrier. With increased resources, we can hire more staff to support the work of the monitoring and evaluation team so we can continue to gather more results from the field.

With increased strategy and knowledge from technical experts we will accelerate our leadership competence and build stronger partnerships that we can consolidate for growth 

With increased funding, we can also build more schools and purchase the required equipment and machines

We identify and measure the progress made in our projects and services to the communities we serve and base on this area of need, we embark on a fundraising drive. 

We currently run mini shops where we sell recycle products designed by members of our community. Other items include mugs and gift items that are branded and can be purchased

We will work on improving our  product sale . Recently, we decided to monetize some of the training and services we provide to government institutions as well as private sector company who  requires consultancy on  CSR solutions and projects. Through sustained donations and grants, we will hope to secure multi level partnerships 

To launch a tailoring shop where we can manufacture/ produce  our own uniforms as well as monetize this service to industries, schools etc that may be  interested in production.

We are currently fundraising to sponsor 5 communities

To sponsor a community with 25 centers to meet the needs of 645  children per community costs $120,000

We are fundraising for at least 5 major centers

The Elevate Prize will help us overcome the education barrier facing children from indigent communities especially those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lack of learning materials - With funding from the Elevate price, we will print more worksheets so inner city children can receive education in their communities. We will purchase educational materials such as Textbooks, pens, paper, pencils, literacy books and radios to continue learning.

For internally displaced children in northern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa who due to terrorist (Boko Haram) insecurities have disrupted academic activities- we will be providing learning kits made up of arts and craft materials, localized sessions on how to deal with trauma, citizens education, English literacy and fun mathematics.

We will also provide psycho-social support by soliciting the services of trained child therapist who will guide them on how to thrive during this time

The fund will help us schedule sexual awareness campaigns for small groups of children so they can be mentally aware and promptly deal with any experiences they may be going through. We will design cartoon messaging in small story books to increase information about sexual and reproductive health.

For families experiencing poverty, additional funds will be used to strengthen their livelihoods and position their parents to continue to provide for them so they can continue their education.

Our belief is with the funding received, children from low income families at the lower end of the income ladder can now get an education and be given equal opportunities.

Due to the large volume of children and families we work with- it is increasingly challenging to track our impact. A monitoring & evaluation partnership will enable us train and implement an internal process that allows us effectively manage the information we receive from the field and the impact we make.

These are areas where we currently require the most urgent support. We desire to develop a funding model that is more sustainable so our reliance on grants and sponsorship will not form 80% of our internal revenue system

I would like to partner with organizations like TechSoup to receive softwares and digital products that will accelerate our data capturing system

I would love to partner with UNICEF to roll out a technical research that adequately captures our challenges and records some of the milestones we have recorded

I would love to partner with Silicon Valley to develop an AI or tech system that allows us digitize the information of the children we serve, creating a platform that allows us document our immediate needs as well as our future  needs 

Microsoft and other leading health partners