I knew these days would come. 

I saw it, what I didn’t see was how fast they were going to come. 

As a young man who only had a dream, I started a global nonprofit, Church on the Streets, with about five thousand naira (which is less than eleven dollars) and this is how it all began.

In my childhood, I didn’t have all of the fancy things. 

Even today, I struggle with little pleasures like watching a movie because growing up, we didn’t have a television. I also don’t understand it when I see grown men excited about playstations, I didn’t grow up with that luxury. Mine was a home where you weren’t sure where the next meal would come from or if you were going to be able to pay for the next tuition. There were times as an undergraduate when I resumed the whole semester with just five thousand naira (less than eleven dollars), sometimes less and that was all I could expect from home. This gives you perspective as to where I am coming from. 

Connecting the dots

Anytime I thought about my dreams, I would say to myself “Man, I don’t have that kind of money, who’s going to help me”. I was always thinking that help had to come from the outside, I didn’t realise that every single thing I needed was trapped on the inside of me and all I needed to do was to begin to take steps. One step after another, the dots would soon begin to connect for me.

My first step to connecting the dots was after I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, which was one of the many books gifted to me by one of my aunties relocating outside the country. In the book, Robert Kiyosaki talked about how it was important for people to have more than one bank account and save money. On reading this, I quickly rushed to a bank in my school and opened an account, then started depositing in small amounts, two hundred naira, five hundred naira, or one thousand naira (all less than five dollars per deposit). It unsurprisingly took me 7-8 months to save four thousand naira (around nine dollars) even though the plan was to have saved a million naira, a little more than two thousand dollars, by the time I was leaving the school. You never know what you can do in two years right? I thought.

One day in church, I heard my pastor make a statement  “You are an answer to someone’s prayer”, and that was the only thing I could remember from his sermon. I left church that evening asking myself “What do I have? What do I have that could be an answer to someone’s prayer?” From that day, I began looking for ways I could help and serve people.

#ChurchontheStreets

Still, on that quest, I had to prepare for an exam on a school night and while going over notes, I got into a conversation with a friend at about 2:00 am and she said to me “Itofa, imagine if we could go to an orphanage home….”. Soon as she uttered those words, something leaped on my inside and it became difficult to continue reading for the exam because of how excited I was about what she had just said. I knew instantly that this was another step I needed to take, another dot was connecting. With the four thousand naira I had saved, the idea for  Church on the Streets began to gain flesh. I thought to myself if as undergraduates we can impact the lives of the children in the orphanage, it means we would leave a mark, a legacy. 

I didn’t know there was anything called nonprofits or NGOs, I just knew I wanted to make a difference in their lives. At the time, I used to write blog articles and I’d use the hashtag #ChurchOnTheStreets, this hashtag was now going to become a real thing. 

Two Tales of Hope

The most inspiring part of the work we have been doing with Church on the Streets is the lives we are impacting, their stories, and how their hope is being revived.

One story is of a lovely woman we met at an Internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Benue. Everything was going well for her and her family until one night, herdsmen attacked them. They killed her husband and destroyed their livelihood. Everything was gone, and ever since then, she has been in the IDP camp. 

She has had to cater for her family in the IDP camp and how she does that is when farmers come to the camp, they’d ask “Who wants a job today?” Along with others, she’d go to the farms and help them pick rice. They’d be paid peanuts, two hundred naira or sometimes four hundred naira, all less than a dollar, for the day's work, for a mother of three. At the end of the day when the farm owners were gone, they would pick the remnants and that’s the only way she and her family would get an opportunity to eat rice. 

On meeting her, with tears in her eyes she said to us “Church on the streets, because of you, I have a whole tuber of yam to myself. I cannot remember the last time I had a tuber of yam”. When you are in an environment like that, there is no way you would not be grateful. Not grateful that you are better, but that you can be on the giving end.

Another is the story of two twin boys, Monday and Sunday were their names. When we met them, they were probably around 4 or 5 months old. I saw these babies while making a documentary about the IDP camp,  thinking about how we amplify the story of the community here. We wanted to raise enough money to help but didn’t have the capacity then. So I thought, “Is there a way we could do a documentary so that families, governments, and people who have the resources can see these people and help us help them?” While we were doing that, I caught a peripheral view of this mother with the twin. Their necks were slim, their stomachs bloated, and they looked emaciated. I went over to their mother and said “Mama, what’s happening here?” we realized they had severe acute malnutrition, so we decided to record this and include it in the documentary. Without any elaborate edits, we put it online and it touched the hearts of people so much that one person wrote us a check to start working with these children in the camp. So we had a medical team focus on the children, sent them groceries, and have done so ever since. They are currently weighing around 6 or 7kg,  which is a lot healthier than where we started.

This experience has further shown me that at the end of the day, we can all make a difference.

A new mission to tackle hunger

Starting this nonprofit, I set out to make a difference but in 2020 shortly after we started, I wanted to quit. I wanted to quit because I was drained, it felt different. I was only giving but not receiving anything coupled with the uncertainties that came with Covid-19. I was at the point of quitting when I got the inspiration to start a Food Bank. I was always passionate about ensuring people never go hungry and instead of quitting, I set out on a new mission, a mission to tackle hunger. It has however taken me three years to say yes to the vision and start doing something about it. 

Church on the Streets is a partner to the food bank, My9jaFoodBank, they are sister organizations. 

The vision for My9jaFoodBank is simple, we are the first food bank in Nigeria to serve schools. Our mission is to use food to keep children in school. We want to use food to increase and improve the learning experience for kids in rural schools, schools in the forest, and schools where you will be shocked children sit on the fence to learn. We want to use food to keep these children in school. 

You have no idea the number of girls dropping out of school, 7-year-olds, and 9-year-olds because they have to go and fend for food to eat. Now they know that they can come to school and My9jaFoodBank will have food for them. 

The food bank is very critical, but we are also setting up a Rural leadership camp where we’d be working with children in the IDP camps, teaching them about leadership, health, and how to be global. In addition, we are committed to educating the kids and their parents about malnutrition which is important to what we do at My9jaFoodBank. 

This is my dream

When I think about why my life has turned out this way, I will say I was privileged to be exposed to incredible mentors who played pivotal and monumental roles in shaping my mindset. They made me believe everything was possible. How was I ever going to get an international passport with the five thousand naira allowance I was getting, who would take me to the airport? Where I’m coming from, it’s rare for people to fly by air.

Still today, there are places where I haven’t traveled to, countries where I haven’t been, where my two legs haven’t touched, that have people who know about Church on the Street, people who give, and volunteer for the organization. It’s incredible how God can use a guy in obscurity to do what he does across the world today.

The experience in the IDP camps and with the nonprofits makes me grateful. Tomorrow when I get into Washington DC or get to South Africa or Australia and I speak on global platforms, my dream is to be able to take these stories and say “Look I am coming from Nigeria, in the global south, this is what is happening and this is what we have done about it. With your support, we could do so much more”. 

This is my dream.