Empowering Futures One Community at a Time

We work directly with communities to unlock potential, nurture talent, and create pathways to opportunity, ensuring individuals have the skills, confidence, and support they need to shape better futures for themselves and those around them.

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Empowering Underserved Youth and Communities Through Inclusive Education, Digital Skills, and Gender Justice in Nigeria

Smart Aid Initiative was founded in 2020 in response to the intersecting humanitarian, social, and governance challenges affecting underserved communities across Nigeria. Many communities continue to face conflict-related pressures, displacement, poverty, gender-based violence, disrupted education, and limited access to digital opportunities. Young people, particularly young women and persons with disabilities are often the most affected, yet the least included in recovery, opportunity, and decision-making processes.

As a youth-led civil society organisation, Smart Aid Initiative is grounded in the belief that communities experiencing crisis are not passive beneficiaries of aid, but active leaders of change. Our work began in communities where insecurity and humanitarian pressures had weakened access to education, protection services, safe civic spaces, and reliable information. We saw how these challenges did more than limit access to services. They silenced voices, pushed girls out of school, reduced youth participation, digital exclusion and increased exposure to harm, misinformation, and exclusion.

14,000+

People Reached

Communities Reached

4,721

Young People Trained

45,000+

Social Media Engagements

Activity report 2024

Our Partners

Our core values

Inclusion

We ensure that all people, especially underserved groups like young women and persons with disabilities, are actively involved and represented in our programs and decision-making processes.

Integrity

We act with honesty, transparency, and ethical responsibility in all our work, building trust with communities, partners, and stakeholders.

Innovation

We embrace creative and forward-thinking approaches, leveraging technology and new ideas to solve complex social challenges.

Collaboration

We work with communities, partners, institutions, and stakeholders to strengthen impact through shared goals and collective action.

Sustainability

We design and implement programs that create long-lasting, positive change, building resilience and self-reliance in the communities we serve.

Equity

We are committed to fairness in access, opportunity, and outcomes, ensuring that no one is left behind because of background, gender, or ability.

In Focus

Digital Skills & Inclusive Livelihoods

We equip young people - women, men, and persons with disabilities with income-oriented digital skills, literacy, and rights awareness to improve employability, entrepreneurship, and economic resilience.

Technology-Driven SRHR, Safeguarding & Anti-GBV Action

We expand access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), safeguarding, and gender-based violence prevention through technology, survivor-centered advocacy, referral pathways, and community accountability mechanisms.

Ethical & Responsible AI for Social Equity

We advocate for ethical, inclusive, and responsible AI systems by advancing data rights, fairness, accessibility, and community participation in technology governance.

Youth Civic Accountability & Good Governance

We build youth civic accountability networks to promote transparency, participation, social monitoring, ethical leadership, and inclusive decision-making in underserved communities.

Smarter Aids for Humanitarian Education & Protection

We strengthen humanitarian education, child protection, and safeguarding systems through Smarter Aids combining innovation, community action, and policy-aligned interventions in underserved settings.

Policy Advocacy & Systems Reform

We lead evidence-based policy advocacy to influence laws, institutional reforms, and public systems that affect education access, digital inclusion, gender equity, youth participation, and social protection. Our advocacy bridges grassroots realities with national and global policy spaces to drive sustainable change.

What the people are saying

Discover the stories that inspire change and highlight the impact of our initiatives.

Education4All Beneficiary

We have been displaced here in this host community, Saminaka, for one year now without any resources to enroll our children in school or start a business. I am beyond happy to see my son enrolled in school and to have received empowerment to start a business. May God bless Smart Aid Initiative

DigitHer Beneficiary

My experience with DigitHer is so amazing, I am glad I have met 3 sets of people, the mentors, facilitators and the amazing beautiful young arewa women. I am very impressed about this program and I hope to join more of these initiatives from the Smart Aid Initiative

Jiki Na Haki Na Beneficiary

The past three days have been very interesting on the course on female ginital mutilation, the take home for me is learning the terms, understanding the punishment and the way forward to eliminate female genital mutilation. Thank you Smart Aid Initiative for hosting this capacity building.

Equal TES Beneficiary

The Equal TES workshop was an eye-opener for me. Before attending, I had heard about AI but had not really engaged with it. This workshop showed me how much I can actually do with this technology. I can now plan my lessons, set exam questions, prepare marking schemes, and reduce the challenges I have been facing in my work. I now realize that I have a practical tool to support my teaching, and I learned how to apply it during this workshop.

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