Mr Taiwo is a man who works with his hands. Manual labour, whatever he can find, whatever pays enough to keep his family moving. He has a wife and five children, the youngest four years old, the oldest thirteen. When we met him in March 2024 in Ijede, Ikorodu, the family had been sleeping in an uncompleted building. Before that, another uncompleted building. Before that, another. They had been moving from one to the next for long enough that it had become ordinary, just the rhythm of their lives. Officially, they were homeless.
In Nigeria, a family like the Taiwos exists in a gap that has no name and no designated response. A man who works, who is trying, who has five children he is doing his best to feed, and who is still sleeping on bare concrete in a building someone else abandoned. There is no housing assistance to apply for. There is no emergency fund. There is no escalation path. What exists is the community around you, and whatever that community can spare, which is often very little because the community is stretched just as thin. We found Mr Taiwo because word reached us. It almost always does.
How we got involved
Someone knew about us and passed the information along. We went to Ijede, met the family, and saw the situation directly. The children were malnourished. They looked unkempt in the way that children look when the adults around them are overwhelmed and exhausted and doing everything they can with nothing. The youngest child was sick. It was Ramadan. We assessed what was needed and we moved quickly because there was no reason to wait.
What that actually looked like
We supplied food for the family immediately. Enough to sustain them for several weeks while we worked on the longer term. We found a two bedroom flat and rented it for them, giving the family a permanent address for the first time in a long time. We re-registered the three children who had been out of school, bought them uniforms, bags, and everything they needed to walk back into a classroom. We paid their school fees. We took the youngest child, who was sick with typhoid, to hospital. He was admitted for four days. We covered the bills. When the family moved into the flat we gave them cash and food to help them settle in properly.
Where they are now
The children are in school. The family is in the flat. We are monitoring their progress and making sure the children stay enrolled and have what they need each term. Mr Taiwo is still working. His wife is with the children. The youngest recovered fully from the typhoid. The family has an address now, which sounds like a small thing until you understand what it means to have been without one.
Names and details have been changed to protect privacy.
