World Poverty Day: NGO solicits support in rescuing vulnerable children

Ahead of the World Poverty Day, the Inner-city Mission for Children has called on government, civil society organizations and stakeholders in the humanitarian sector to intervene in the plight of children in Nigeria.

Addressing journalists Wednesday in Abuja, the Executive Director of Innercity Mission for Children, Omoh Alabi, said that the organization has been doing its best to provide humanitarian interventions to children and vulnerable groups in states across the federation, adding that positive effort from stakeholders will go a long way in securing the future of Nigerian children.

She said: “All our interventions are geared towards the eradication of poverty. We are in consultative mission with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). All our interventions are Child centred and aligned with the UN SDGs. We have impacted over 20 million beneficiaries. We work in 82 countries of the world and in all the geopolitical zones of the country.

“We envision a world where orphaned, vulnerable and excluded children will be provided for. Children are our future and we actually ignore them at our peril. The future we have today was designed for us by our forebears. We have opportunities to design the future if we invest in our children. We have done education, feeding and family programmes, child health and nutrition programmes, shelter, humanitarian response for Nigerians. These are the vehicles through which we deliver sustainable development to our beneficiaries over the past 7 years, impacting on over 20 million beneficiaries.

“We have done intervention programmes in Northern Nigeria for over 40,000 IDPs in Adamawa, Borno and Taraba. We intervened in flood disaster victims in Niger, Benue and Kogi, land dispute victims in Bakassi Peninsula, victims of collapsed school building in Lagos, among others.

“We believe that early child education is fundamental. When a child misses out in education early in life, it has negative impact on the child, community and nation at large. Therefore, we established 8 charity schools that are 100 per cent free to indigent children who didn’t have the opportunity to go to school. We run back-to-school campaign annually; to enrol children back in school. We have these charity schools situated: three in Lagos, one in Ogun, one in Adamawa, Aba and Owerri.

“So, we support hundreds of families through our programmes, whom we provide monthly food assistance to.  We have thriving orphanage support network, where we support over 700 orphanages in Nigeria and different parts of the world. We have learning centres for children. We commissioned maternal health centre in Waru district of Abuja. We are calling critical stakeholders in humanitarian sector, national and national bodies, beneficiaries of humanitarian programmes to take concrete sustainable actions to end poverty in all its forms.”