Every city has communities its systems choose not to see. In Lagos — Africa’s largest city, a metropolis of over 15 million — those communities are everywhere: the overcrowded public schools of Surulere, the wards of Lagos Island General Hospital, the back streets of Mushin where widows raise children in silence. Tokanny Faith Foundation has made it its mission to show up in those places — not with cameras for fundraising, but with supplies, presence, and the kind of sustained commitment that actually changes lives.

Showing Up Where Others Don’t

Founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tokanny Faith Foundation was born out of a simple, urgent observation: the people most devastated by crisis were those least visible to formal relief systems. Widows who had lost their husbands had no income, no social safety net, and increasingly, no community. Children whose parents could no longer afford school fees quietly disappeared from classrooms without anyone noticing.

“We didn’t set out to build an organisation. We set out to help one person, then another, then another — and we couldn’t stop.”

That organic, grassroots approach continues to define how TFF operates. Rather than managing aid from a distance, our volunteers physically enter communities, visit hospitals, sit with widows in their homes, and distribute supplies directly into the hands of children. There are no middlemen, no administrative drain — just direct impact.

Three Programs, One Mission

Today, TFF runs three active programs across Lagos. Our Education and Scholarship program has distributed hundreds of school bags, stationery packs, and fee sponsorships to pupils at public primary and junior secondary schools — targeting children whose parents are one school-fee away from pulling them out permanently. Our Widow Empowerment program pairs care packages and food support with practical skills training, helping widows move from dependency to income generation. And our Hospital and Orphanage Outreach program brings supplies, financial contributions, and human presence to children’s wards and care homes across the city.

Each program is designed around one principle: dignity. We believe that how you give matters as much as what you give.

What’s Next

In the second half of 2025, TFF is expanding its widow empowerment program to include a tailoring and craft cooperative, providing widows with both skills and a market for their products. We are also deepening our presence in the hospital outreach space, targeting underserved pediatric wards across four additional Lagos hospitals. None of this is possible without the generosity of our donors and volunteers — and we are grateful for every single one.

Nigeria’s education crisis is not a future problem. It is happening right now. As of 2025, an estimated 18.3 million Nigerian children remain out of school — a number that professors and civil society leaders have described as a national emergency. In Lagos State, the picture is paradoxical: the city is home to some of the country’s most elite private schools, while millions of children from low-income families cannot afford even the most basic public schooling costs.

The Cost of School Has Never Been Higher

Inflation in Nigeria has pushed the real cost of education far beyond what many families can manage. Even in public schools — which are theoretically free — families face indirect costs: uniforms, exercise books, exam fees, transport, and levies that have become normalised over the years. For a single mother in Surulere or a widow in Mushin, these expenses can be the difference between her child in school and her child on the street.

“A city cannot claim educational success simply because elite schools exist within its borders. The true measure is whether quality learning is accessible to the average child.”

BusinessDay Nigeria, 2025

The World Bank has noted that 70% of 10-year-old Nigerian children cannot read or understand a simple sentence — a statistic that reflects not just access gaps but quality failures at every level of the system. Lagos, for all its wealth and infrastructure, has not escaped this crisis.

What Nonprofits Are Doing

In the absence of sufficient government action, grassroots organisations have become the primary responders. At Tokanny Faith Foundation, we are not trying to solve the entire system — we are focused on the child in front of us. Our school bag drives, fee sponsorships, and stationery distributions are small interventions that carry enormous meaning for the families they reach. When a child walks into school with a proper bag and pencils for the first time, something shifts — in that child, and in their family’s belief that the future is still possible.

• Hundreds of school bags and stationery packs distributed since 2020
• Partnerships with public junior secondary schools in Surulere and Lagos Island
• Term-based fee sponsorships for children of widows in our network
• Mentorship visits to schools to encourage continued enrollment

The Work Continues

The 2025 school bag drive targeted New Era Girls Junior Secondary School, one of Lagos’s most overcrowded public schools. With classrooms holding up to 80 pupils and a persistent shortage of basic learning materials, the need was acute. Our team showed up with 200 fully packed school bags — and left with something harder to quantify: the sound of children who felt seen.

In many Nigerian communities, widowhood is not simply the loss of a husband. It is the beginning of a different kind of crisis — one that combines grief with economic collapse, social ostracism, and legal vulnerability. In Lagos, where the cost of living has risen sharply due to fuel subsidy removal and currency devaluation, widows are among the most economically exposed people in the city.

A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

According to civil society researchers, Nigeria has one of the highest rates of widowhood in sub-Saharan Africa, with millions of women losing their husbands and finding themselves without income, often excluded from inheritance, and dependent on family networks that have been stretched thin by poverty. In urban Lagos, the situation is further complicated by the anonymity of city life — widows who might have had community support in a village find themselves largely invisible in a high-rise apartment block or rented room.

“They came to me when I had nothing left. Not just food — they sat with me. They heard me. That was the beginning of my healing.”

A TFF widow beneficiary, Lagos, 2024

Many widows in our network describe the same pattern: the death of a husband triggers immediate financial crisis, which is then compounded by cultural pressures, depression, and social withdrawal. Without intervention, this becomes a multi-generational cycle — mothers unable to feed or educate their children, who grow up in poverty and repeat the pattern.

How Tokanny Faith Foundation Responds

Our approach to widow empowerment is built on three layers. First, immediate relief — care packages containing food, household essentials, and personal items that meet urgent needs. Second, community — regular visits, prayer meetings, and gatherings that remind widows they are not alone. Third, economic empowerment — skills training, cooperative models, and linkage to income-generating opportunities that move widows from dependency to self-sufficiency.

Our Christmas outreach has become one of our most impactful annual programs. In December 2024, we delivered branded care boxes to over 40 widows across two Lagos communities — a simple but powerful act of visibility that says: someone remembers you.

What Needs to Change Systemically

While TFF’s work addresses immediate needs, we recognise that sustainable change requires policy shifts too. The Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act, which provides some legal protections for women including widows, faces ongoing threats at the legislative level. We stand with all organisations advocating for its protection and strengthening. Until the system catches up, we will keep showing up.

December is a time when generosity feels natural. But for children in orphanages and hospitals across Lagos, December has historically been indistinguishable from any other month — same bare walls, same institutional routines, same absence of the warmth that the season promises. Tokanny Faith Foundation decided, from our very first year, that this would not be acceptable. Our Christmas outreach has become one of our most anticipated and most impactful programs.

December 2024: What We Did

In December 2024, our team mobilised volunteers, packed boxes, loaded vehicles, and set out across Lagos with a clear mission: to make Christmas real for people who are too often forgotten. We visited two children’s hospital wards on Lagos Island, bringing financial contributions to help families who could not afford medical bills, as well as personal hygiene kits, snacks, and gifts for the children on the ward.

We also delivered our signature care boxes — branded Tokanny Faith Foundation packages containing food staples, toiletries, and household items — to over 40 widows in Surulere and the surrounding communities. Each box was packed with care and delivered personally by a volunteer who spent time with the recipient rather than simply leaving the box at the door.

“The box was lovely. But what I will remember is that they came themselves. They sat with me. My children were watching — they saw that their mother is not forgotten.”

A widow recipient, December 2024

Why Presence Matters

There is a tendency in charitable work to measure impact purely in materials: how many boxes, how many naira, how many kilograms of food. Those metrics matter — but they don’t capture everything. Research in community psychology consistently shows that social connection and the feeling of being seen are as important to wellbeing as material aid, particularly for people experiencing grief and isolation. Our outreach is designed with this in mind. We don’t drop and run. We stay. We listen. We pray together when welcomed. We follow up.

Planning for 2025

Our December 2025 outreach is already in planning. We are aiming to reach 80 widows — double last year’s number — and to add a third hospital visit to our itinerary. Funding is the primary constraint, and every donation received between now and November goes directly toward making this happen. If you want your gift to light up a child’s Christmas, there is no better time to give.

On a bright Tuesday morning in February 2025, the courtyard of New Era Girls Junior Secondary School in Surulere was louder than usual. The noise was a good kind — the sound of children cheering, holding bags above their heads for photographs, laughing with volunteers who had driven from across Lagos to be there. This was our 2025 School Bag Drive, and it was our biggest education initiative to date.

The Numbers

200 fully packed school bags were distributed across two schools — New Era Girls JSS and a partner boys’ school in the same local government area. Each bag contained a set of exercise books, pens and pencils, a ruler, an eraser, a pencil sharpener, and a small motivational card signed by our volunteers. The bags were sourced locally, supporting Lagos-based vendors as part of our commitment to keeping our spending in the community where it matters.

• 200 school bags distributed
• 2 public schools served
• Targeting JSS 1–3 pupils (ages 10–14)
• Each bag fully stocked with learning materials
• Approximately ₦2,000 worth of materials per child

Why School Bags?

The question might seem obvious — but it’s worth answering clearly. A school bag is not a luxury item for a Nigerian child. Without one, books get wet in the rain, materials get lost, and children face daily humiliation from peers and sometimes teachers. Showing up without the right materials is a visible marker of poverty that compounds shame and can contribute to school avoidance and eventual dropout. Giving a child a proper bag is giving them the dignity to show up fully.

“My daughter cried when she saw it. She said she had been praying for a bag like this. I didn’t know. She never told me because she knew I couldn’t afford it.”

A parent at New Era Girls JSS, February 2025

What Happens Next

The school bag drive is not a one-off event — it is the entry point to a longer relationship with these schools. Our volunteers maintain contact with the head teachers, follow up on student retention, and identify children who may need additional support such as fee sponsorship or counselling. We believe that true impact requires sustained presence, not occasional heroics. Our next school visit is planned for May 2025, ahead of the third-term exams, where we’ll provide revision materials and peer encouragement sessions.

Thank you to every donor who made February’s drive possible. You didn’t just give bags — you gave 200 children a reason to keep coming to school.