Love In Action, a Christian Nonprofit, is spreading love to underprivileged kids all across Nigeria

A Valentine’s Day Special Edition

This article was co-written by Glamour Adah

The Love In Action Initiative is a faith-based non-profit that showers less privileged children across Nigeria with love through its outreach programs every Christmas. The organization has impacted hundreds of children in several states in the country, such as Calabar, Rivers, Lagos, Ogun, Plateau, Edo, Delta, and Enugu. It was founded in 2021 by Olamide Kuforiji, a musician, entrepreneur, and engineer.

Olamide started Love In Action while he was an undergraduate at Covenant University, leveraging the support culture of the student community to gather volunteers. His drive to help people and empower them to increase their standard of living spurred him to start charity outreach programs that are now an annual tradition of the organization.

“I felt a nudge in my heart to reach out to my community, no matter how little it could be. I was eager to see people’s standard of living increased and wanted the situation around me to improve,” said Olamide.

LIA ‘s 2021 Outreach in Lagos, where LIA gave out clothes and books to a less privileged community in Lagos.

Through its outreaches, the NGO provides basic amenities to underprivileged children and supports them in accessing quality education. As an organization, Love In Action promotes the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the organization aims to work towards the realization of all 17 goals in underserved communities in Nigeria.

In terms of challenges faced during their operations, Olamide said that funding their outreach programs was one of the biggest issues. This includes travel expenses and even purchasing the amenities and resources they distribute to underserved communities, which is the core aspect of their outreach. He also mentioned that getting the same volunteers to show up at the different impact locations has been a bit difficult.

Olamide Kuforiji and one of the beneficiaries of the initiative.

This year, the LIA initiative plans to reach out to and partner with big firms and corporations that have the similar aim of creating social impact in communities. These partnerships will provide the LIA team with enough support to scale their impact during their outreach programs, whether through food provision or gathering books and other necessities to help establish educational facilities in these communities.

Currently, the initiative is made up of over 200 volunteers who are driven to impact people’s lives and spread the gospel. The LIA Initiative is open to receiving as many new additions to its team as possible. They believe every member of society should strive to improve society and impact the people in the community in whatever way they can.

In his final remarks, Olamide said:

“More people should be invested in community development because we believe it is a personal responsibility. People need to understand that community development is focused on empowering one’s community, it’s about growing the people and developing the structures that make up the society.”