When insecurity closes a road, a school, a clinic or a market, the world's help usually stops at the edge of it. We don't. GELI is an indigenous organisation staffed by Zamfara's own sons and daughters already living in the communities everyone else has had to leave behind.
An indigenous, community-based NGO bridging development partners, government and the private sector to hard-to-reach communities across Zamfara State.
Zamfara State is passing through one of the most difficult chapters in its history. Persistent insecurity has driven thousands of families off their farms and into local government headquarters and urban centres. They arrive having lost their land, their livelihoods and their stability. Their children; many of whom were enrolled in school only months before, now spend their days on the streets, out of education, and too often begging for food.
The damage does not stop at the classroom door. As insecurity persists, education, health, agriculture and the wider economy decline together. Families who once fed their communities can no longer farm. Clinics and schools struggle to stay open. An entire generation watches its options narrow.
And at exactly the moment these communities need support most, many national and international organisations have reduced, suspended or withdrawn their activities, understandably unwilling to send their staff into affected local government areas.
The result is an intervention gap: the communities in greatest need have become the hardest for outside help to reach.
GELI is built on a simple but powerful idea: the people best placed to serve Zamfara's communities are Zamfara's own sons and daughters.
We recruit, train and deploy qualified, educated indigenes from every one of the state's fourteen local government areas. They speak the language. They know the customs. They are trusted by the traditional and religious leaders. And crucially they are already there.
That single fact turns Zamfara's greatest operational obstacle into a solvable problem. Where it is unsafe for outsiders to travel, we are home. Where local knowledge and community trust are essential, we already have both. Where opportunity exists but news of it never travels, we carry it.
National and international NGOs, donors, UN agencies and contractors engage us to implement their programmes in places their own staff cannot safely reach to their methodology, to their standards, with transparent reporting and verified evidence.
We carry vacancies, government schemes, grants and skills programmes into every ward and we take the lead in sourcing, verifying and shortlisting the right candidates for employers who cannot reach into these communities themselves.
Beyond what we do for partners, GELI's management finances and delivers its own programmes in education, health, digital and AI literacy, job-opportunity awareness and public orientation free to every participant, with no donor required.
GELI CATCH-UP LEARNING PROGRAMME
Aisha is nine. A year ago she was in Primary 3 and could read her own name. Then her family fled their village. Today she can't remember the letters and no school in the town she now lives in has room for her.
There are thousands of children like Aisha in Zamfara State right now. Not children who failed at school. Children whom school stopped being available to.
The GELI Catch-Up Learning Programme is our answer to them. It is a free, thirteen-week foundational learning programme in Hausa reading and early mathematics, delivered at weekends in community spaces under a tree, in a ward centre, in a borrowed classroom by facilitators from the children's own communities. Twenty-six lessons of thirty-five minutes each. No fees. No uniform. No entry test. No child turned away.
By week thirteen, a child who arrived unable to recognise a single letter can read simple Hausa sentences, count and write numbers to twenty, and add and subtract with confidence. More than that: they are back in the habit of learning, back among other children, and ready to be reintegrated into formal school.
Two lessons every weekend
35 minutes each, fully scripted
Hausa literacy and foundational maths
Funded by GELI, at no cost to any family
We identify and recruit qualified, educated indigenes from every local government area in Zamfara State, building a workforce that already lives within and is already trusted by the communities to be served.
You brief and train our personnel on exactly how you want your work delivered: your methodology, your tools, your safeguarding requirements, your reporting formats.
Before any field activity begins, personnel are briefed on their safeguarding obligations, on informed consent and on the handling of personal and partner data. Every engagement has a named safeguarding focal point and a written data-handling protocol.
Our trained teams carry out the agreed activities directly in the field including in local government areas that are inaccessible or unsafe for your own staff to enter.
We collect data, document results and report clearly and on time, giving you full visibility of progress and verified evidence of impact without putting a single member of your team at risk.
Who we work with
Keep your programmes running in Zamfara without exposing your staff to risk. We implement to your standards and report to your formats.
Partner with us →A disciplined, locally-rooted workforce for enrolment drives, sensitisation, enumeration, verification and civic engagement across all fourteen LGAs.
Work with our teams →Stop settling for the nearest candidate. We advertise into every LGA, verify credentials in the candidate's own community, and present a shortlist you can defend.
Hire the right candidate →Reach rural households through the voices they already trust with community mobilisation, trained promoters and market intelligence, LGA by LGA.
Reach your market →Compliance & trust
Our value to any partner rests entirely on being trusted with two things: people, and information. So we treat compliance not as paperwork attached to a contract, but as the condition of our licence to operate.
Zero tolerance of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment. Signed Code of Conduct and PSEAH commitment for every member of personnel, before any contact with a community.
Aligned to the IASC Six Core Principles, and we adopt your safeguarding policy where it is more stringent than our own.
Child safeguarding by default. Two-adult rule, no unsupervised one-to-one contact, written parent or guardian consent for participation and for any photography.
Custodians of data, never its owners. Written data processing agreement for every engagement, no secondary use, segregation by partner, certified destruction on exit.
Compliant with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, and with GDPR or other regimes where your obligations extend to them.
Open to audit on reasonable notice Records, systems, sites and personnel files relating to your engagement.
Whether you are a donor who needs a programme delivered, a ministry that needs to reach every ward, an employer looking for the right candidate, or a company trying to reach a market nobody else can; we should talk.
We are an indigenous, community-based non-governmental organisation, founded in Gusau to close the widening gap between the help that exists and the communities that can no longer be reached.
The Grassroots Empowerment and Livelihood Initiative (GELI) is an indigenous, community-based non-governmental organisation founded to close the widening intervention gap in Zamfara State, North-West Nigeria.
We were born out of a deep, first-hand understanding of the security, social and economic realities on the ground not from a policy paper written elsewhere. GELI exists to ensure that development, opportunity and reliable information reach the communities that need them most, including those in local government areas that have become difficult or unsafe for external organisations to access.
We are built on a simple but powerful idea: the people best placed to serve Zamfara's communities are Zamfara's own sons and daughters. By recruiting and training qualified, educated indigenes from every local government area in the state, GELI provides a trusted local presence that national and international organisations, government agencies, donors, employers and commercial firms can rely on to deliver their programmes and reach their audiences safely, credibly and effectively.
We connect outside expertise and resources with grassroots access and local knowledge, delivering programmes in places our partners cannot safely reach themselves.
We take the lead in sourcing the right candidates for employers and private firms recruiting anywhere in the state, and we mobilise credible local networks for commercial companies that need to reach hard-to-reach communities with their products and services.
We design and deliver our own programmes, financed by GELI management and free to participants in education, health, job-opportunity awareness, government programme access, basic computer and artificial intelligence literacy, and public orientation on contemporary issues.
Ensuring no community is left behind because of where it is located or how difficult it is to reach.
Placing local people, local knowledge and local trust at the heart of every intervention.
Creating dignified employment for educated indigenes drawn from every local government area in the state.
Making sure young people in every ward know about the jobs, government interventions and digital skills that could change their circumstances.
Delivering our partners' programmes with transparency, accountability and measurable results.
Safeguarding the people we work with, protecting the third-party data entrusted to us, and securing the information we hold, in every engagement without exception.
Standing with the displaced, the out-of-school child, the unemployed graduate, the vulnerable family and the at-risk community for the long term.
Zamfara State is passing through one of the most challenging periods in its history. Persistent insecurity has forced large numbers of families to flee their rural communities for the relative safety of local government headquarters and urban centres. Many of these displaced families have lost their farms, their livelihoods and their stability. Their children, once enrolled in school, now roam the streets, out of education and often reduced to begging for food. This has produced a deepening education crisis across the state.
The consequences extend far beyond the classroom. As insecurity persists, the state's education, health, agriculture and broader economic systems continue to decline together. Families that once fed themselves and their communities can no longer farm; clinics and schools in affected areas struggle to function; and opportunity narrows for an entire generation of young people.
At the very moment when these communities most need support, many national and international organisations have reduced, suspended or withdrawn their activities understandably reluctant to expose their staff to the risks of travelling to affected local government areas. The result is a widening intervention gap: the communities in greatest need have become the hardest for outside help to reach.
Alongside insecurity sits a second, quieter crisis. Thousands of educated young people across Zamfara's local government areas are unemployed not only because jobs are scarce, but because they never hear about the ones that exist. Federal and state empowerment schemes, loans, grants, skills programmes and recruitment drives are announced through channels that rarely reach the rural ward, and are too often mediated by middlemen who charge for access to something that is free. Employers in Gusau, Kaduna, Kano and Abuja report that they cannot find suitable candidates from these areas, while qualified indigenes sit at home unaware that recruitment is even open.
At the same time, digital tools and now artificial intelligence are rapidly reshaping what employers expect of a candidate. Young people who have never used a computer are being pushed further behind before they begin. And communities with no reliable source of information on contemporary issues are left exposed to rumour, misinformation and outright fraud.
The same access problem constrains the private sector. Companies with products and services that would be genuinely useful to rural households agricultural inputs, financial and mobile-money services, telecommunications, health and nutrition products, solar and building materials cannot safely or credibly reach the hard-to-reach local government areas, and have no trusted local networks through which to introduce themselves. Communities lose access to goods, services and information; companies lose a market that would have paid for itself.
GELI was conceived as a direct, practical response to these gaps.
Where it is unsafe for outsiders to travel, we are already there. Where local knowledge and community trust are essential, we already have them. Where opportunity exists but news of it does not travel, we carry it.
By organising and training Zamfara's own qualified indigenes into a disciplined, professional workforce, GELI makes it possible for development, employment and legitimate commerce to continue even in the places they had begun to leave behind.
Local knowledge. Local trust. Local action.
To bridge the gap between development partners, government, employers and underserved communities in Zamfara State by deploying a trusted network of qualified indigenous personnel who can safely and effectively deliver education, health, agriculture, humanitarian and empowerment interventions even in the most difficult-to-reach areas; to open access to jobs, government programmes, digital and AI skills and reliable information for young people in every local government area; and to create meaningful, dignified employment for the people of Zamfara.
A Zamfara State where every community no matter how remote or affected by insecurity has access to quality education, healthcare, reliable information and real economic opportunity, delivered by its own people, for its own people.
Everything GELI does is guided by a clear set of values.
We believe lasting change is led by the people who live it. Local presence, local knowledge and local trust are our greatest assets.
We act with honesty, transparency and accountability in every partnership, every project and every naira entrusted to us.
The safety, dignity and protection of the people we work with especially children, women and others at risk comes before programme delivery, reputation or convenience.
Information entrusted to us by partners, communities and individuals is held securely, used only for its agreed purpose, and never disclosed without lawful authority.
We serve all people without discrimination reaching women, children, youth, persons with disabilities, the displaced and the vulnerable in equal measure.
We believe information about work, training and government support is a public good and we give it away freely.
We stand with our communities through difficulty, and we deliver on what we promise.
We pursue the highest standards in our work, and continually build the skills of our people and our partners.
What distinguishes GELI is our local partner model, a structured approach to delivering work where outside organisations cannot easily operate.
Rather than asking partners to assume the risk of operating directly in volatile areas, we provide a ready, trained and trusted local workforce that delivers their programmes on their behalf, to their standards, and reports back transparently.
We identify and recruit qualified, educated indigenes from every local government area in Zamfara State, building a workforce that already lives within and is trusted by the communities to be served.
Our partners brief and train our personnel on exactly how they want their services delivered: their methodology, standards, tools, safeguarding requirements and reporting formats.
Before any field activity begins, personnel are briefed on their safeguarding obligations, on informed consent, and on the handling of personal and partner data. Every engagement has a named safeguarding focal point and a documented data-handling protocol agreed in writing with the partner.
Our trained teams carry out the agreed activities directly in the field, including in local government areas that are inaccessible or unsafe for the partner's own staff to travel to.
We collect data, document results and provide clear, timely reports giving partners full visibility of progress and verified evidence of impact, without putting their own staff at risk.
This model turns Zamfara's greatest operational challenge restricted access into a solvable problem. It allows partners, government and legitimate businesses to keep serving the communities that need them, while ensuring that the economic benefit of that work stays within the state, in the hands of its own people.
GELI's strength lies in its people. We deliberately recruit qualified and educated indigenes from every local government area of Zamfara State so that wherever a programme, a vacancy or a campaign needs to reach, we have personnel who already belong to that community, speak its language, understand its customs, and are trusted by its leaders and residents.
This approach delivers three benefits at once.
To areas that outsiders cannot easily reach.
Interventions that are appropriate and genuinely accepted by the community.
For educated young people across the state, keeping talent and economic opportunity at home and giving Zamfara's own people a direct stake in their state's recovery.
Every member of GELI personnel is recruited through a documented process that includes identity and address verification, credential checks, reference checks including a specific safeguarding reference and confirmation of standing in their own community.
Before deployment, all personnel are trained, oriented and required to sign:
These obligations are refreshed annually and continue to bind our personnel after their engagement with GELI ends.
GELI operates under a clear governance structure designed to ensure accountability, transparency, compliance and effective service delivery.
Provides strategic oversight, safeguards the organisation's mission, holds management accountable, and receives reports on safeguarding and data protection directly.
Led by Founder/Executive Director; responsible for day-to-day operations, partnerships and programme quality.
Designated officer, independent of programme delivery, with a direct reporting line to the Board and an opposite-gender alternate; responsible for safeguarding policy, training, reporting channels and case management.
Responsible for data processing agreements, consent, retention/disposal, breach response, and liaison with Nigeria Data Protection Commission and partners.
Sectors include education, health, agriculture, humanitarian, research/monitoring, digital/AI literacy, coordinated from Gusau.
Maintains a consent-based talent pool, manages employer engagements and advertisements, and coordinates screening, verification and assessment logistics across local government areas.
Responsible for market access/activation, promoter recruitment and supervision, and ethical-marketing review.
Trained local personnel across all 14 LGAs.
GELI's value to any partner rests entirely on being trusted with two things: people and information. We therefore treat compliance not as paperwork attached to a contract, but as the condition of our licence to operate.
Every engagement development, government or commercial is delivered under the standards set out below. We actively welcome partner audit, verification and unannounced spot-checks against them.
Safeguarding takes precedence over programme delivery, over reputation and over commercial convenience. Our position is unambiguous.
Zero tolerance. GELI maintains zero tolerance of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (SEAH), of any form of abuse or exploitation of a child or adult at risk, and of the abuse of power by any member of personnel, associate, volunteer, promoter, consultant or downstream partner.
Recognised standards. We align with the IASC Six Core Principles relating to Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, and we adopt our partners' own safeguarding policies and reporting requirements where these are more stringent than our own.
Signed commitments before deployment. Every member of personnel signs the Code of Conduct and PSEAH commitment before any contact with a community, receives induction training on it, and repeats that training annually.
Child safeguarding. No unsupervised one-to-one contact with children; a two-adult rule for all activities involving children; written parent or guardian consent for participation and for any photography or filming; and adherence to the Child Rights Act and applicable state child protection provisions.
Safer recruitment. Identity and address verification, credential checks, a specific safeguarding reference, disclosure of any prior disciplinary or misconduct history, and verification of community standing applied to field promoters and short-term enumerators exactly as to permanent staff.
A named focal point and a woman to report to. A designated Safeguarding Focal Point independent of programme delivery, with an alternate of the opposite gender, so that women and girls always have a woman to whom they can report.
Accessible reporting channels. Multiple confidential routes — a dedicated telephone line, the named focal point, a written complaints form and an anonymous channel publicised in Hausa and English in every community where we operate, in formats accessible to people who cannot read.
Survivor-centred response. The safety, wishes, confidentiality, dignity and non-discrimination of the survivor guide every decision. Immediate referral to medical, psychosocial and legal support where wanted, and no pressure on a survivor to report to authorities.
Investigation and notification. A documented investigation, disciplinary and referral procedure, with notification to the affected partner within the timeframe their contract specifies 24 or 48 hours as required and referral to the appropriate authorities where the law requires it.
Non-retaliation. Anyone reporting a concern in good faith is protected from retaliation of any kind. Retaliation is itself a disciplinary offence.
Do no harm. A conflict-sensitivity and do-no-harm assessment before entering any community, so that our presence does not expose participants, personnel or the community to risk.
GELI routinely handles data that belongs to somebody else, beneficiary records for a development partner, applicant records for an employer, consumer data for a commercial client, enumeration data for a government agency. Our standing position is that we are custodians of that data and never its owners.
Lawful basis and purpose limitation. Personal data is collected only where there is a lawful basis, and used only for the specific purpose agreed in writing with the data owner. Nothing else.
Informed consent. Participants are told, in a language they genuinely understand, what is being collected, why, who will see it, how long it will be held and how to withdraw. Consent is recorded. For children, consent is obtained from a parent or guardian together with the child's own assent.
Data minimisation. We collect the least data necessary for the agreed purpose. Sensitive personal data; health, biometric, religious, political or similar is not collected without explicit written instruction and justification from the data owner.
Legal framework. We comply with the Nigeria Data Protection Act (NDPA) 2023 and the directions of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, and with the UK/EU GDPR or other regimes where a partner's obligations extend to them.
Written data processing agreements. Every engagement involving personal data is governed by a data processing agreement or equivalent contractual clause specifying ownership, permitted use, security standards, sub-processing, retention, breach notification, and return or destruction on exit.
Binding confidentiality undertakings. Every person with access to third-party data signs a confidentiality and non-disclosure undertaking that survives the end of their engagement with GELI.
No secondary use, ever. Partner and client data is never reused for another engagement, shared with a third party, sold, or applied to GELI's own purposes. Recruitment data is never shown to a competing employer; one commercial client's market data is never shared with another.
Segregation and need-to-know access. Data belonging to different partners is stored separately, under access rights granted strictly on a need-to-know basis, and access is logged.
Retention and disposal. Data is retained only for the agreed period, then securely deleted or returned to the owner, with a signed certificate of destruction where the partner requires one.
Data subject rights. Requests for access, correction, objection or erasure are logged on receipt and referred to the data owner for instruction within the agreed timeframe.
Imagery and case studies. Photographs, film and personal stories are collected and used only with specific, separate, revocable written consent and never in a way that could place a person at risk.
Our controls are designed to be proportionate to a field organisation working across fourteen local government areas, and to withstand a partner's due-diligence review.
Access control unique named accounts, strong passwords enforced through a password manager, and multi-factor authentication on all email, cloud storage and data-collection platforms. Shared logins are prohibited.
Device security full-disk encryption, enforced screen locks, current operating systems and anti-malware on every laptop and tablet, with remote wipe enabled on all mobile devices used for field data collection.
Encryption in transit and at rest digital data collection on encrypted, authenticated platforms; paper forms transported in sealed envelopes and held in locked storage until digitisation, then securely destroyed.
Approved channels only personal email accounts, personal cloud storage, consumer messaging applications and personal USB drives are prohibited for third-party data. Transfers use only the channel and platform the partner specifies.
Least privilege and prompt revocation access rights are role-based, reviewed quarterly, and revoked the same day a person leaves or changes role.
AI tool governance we teach AI literacy and we use AI tools, which makes us explicit about the risk. Personal, confidential or partner-identifiable data is never entered into a public AI assistant or any third-party tool not covered by an approved agreement. Approved AI use is confined to non-sensitive drafting, learning and analysis, and all AI-assisted output is reviewed by a person before use.
Backup and continuity encrypted backups on an agreed schedule, held separately from primary storage, with periodic restore testing and a documented continuity plan for loss of premises, power or connectivity.
Incident response a documented breach response procedure: immediate containment, assessment of risk to affected individuals, notification of the affected partner within the contractual window and of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission within the statutory 72-hour period where applicable, remediation, and a written post-incident report with corrective actions.
Physical security locked offices and filing cabinets, controlled visitor access, clear-desk practice, and secure shredding of paper records.
Training information security and data protection induction before deployment, and refresher training at least annually, with completion recorded.
A documented policy suite, kept current Safeguarding and PSEAH; Child Protection; Data Protection and Privacy; Information Security and Acceptable Use; Code of Conduct; Whistleblowing; Anti-Fraud, Bribery and Corruption; Conflict of Interest; and Complaints and Feedback.
Due diligence as routine we complete partner capacity assessments, due-diligence questionnaires and policy reviews as a normal part of contracting, not as an exception.
Open to audit partners and clients may audit our records, systems, sites and personnel files relating to their engagement, on reasonable notice.
Annual self-assessment a yearly internal assessment against safeguarding and data-protection standards, with findings and a corrective action plan made available to partners on request.
Financial accountability segregated project accounting, full narrative and financial reporting to the partner's format, and independent audit of the organisation's accounts.
Organisations, agencies and companies choose to work through GELI because we offer something no external team can easily replicate: a genuine, trusted, on-the-ground presence.
Partnering with us means:
Your programmes, vacancies and campaigns can continue to reach communities that would otherwise be cut off by insecurity.
You keep your own staff out of harm's way while still delivering high-quality results.
Our personnel are accepted and trusted because they are part of the communities they serve.
Employers get a shortlist sourced from all fourteen local government areas and verified in the candidate's own community.
Commercial partners reach hard-to-reach consumers through voices those consumers already trust.
Safeguarding, third-party data protection and information security are documented, contractually committed and open to your inspection.
We deliver to your methodology and standards, with transparent monitoring, documentation and reporting.
Every engagement strengthens local capacity and creates employment for educated indigenes of the state.
One trusted local partner across all fourteen local government areas of Zamfara State.
Start a conversation about the communities you need to reach, the programme you need to deliver, or the opportunity you want to bring to Zamfara.
What We Do
GELI provides five complementary streams of service. Together, they allow us to support development partners, assist government, connect employers and commercial firms to the communities they cannot otherwise reach and act directly on behalf of the most vulnerable.
01: FOR NGOs, DONORS, UN AGENCIES AND DEVELOPMENT CONTRACTORS
For national and international NGOs, donors, UN agencies and development contractors who wish to work in Zamfara but cannot safely deploy their own staff, GELI serves as a reliable local implementing partner.
GELI field team conducting a household survey or distribution
02: FOR MINISTRIES, DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
GELI is equally available to support government ministries, departments and agencies in delivering services that require trusted human capital and grassroots reach across the state.
03: FOR EMPLOYERS, CONTRACTORS AND INSTITUTIONS
For companies, private firms, contractors and institutions that want to recruit but cannot reach into or reliably verify candidates across Zamfara's local government areas, GELI takes the lead in sourcing the right people.
Because we maintain trained focal personnel in every local government area, we can carry a vacancy into communities that no job board reaches, and then filter, verify and present only candidates who genuinely fit the role.
Advertise into every LGA: publicise vacancies and recruitment drives simultaneously across all fourteen local government areas, in Hausa and English, through community, traditional, religious, educational and youth structures as well as digital channels.
Build and maintain a talent pool: a structured, consent-based database of qualified indigenes, searchable by local government area, discipline, qualification, skill and experience.
Screen and shortlist: assess applications against your stated criteria, competencies, grade and budget, and present a defensible shortlist with reasons.
Verify at source: confirm credentials, residency, character references, disciplinary history and community standing in the candidate's own community. This is a check no remote recruiter can replicate.
Run assessments locally: coordinate written tests, practical assessments and interviews within the LGA, including venue, invigilation and logistics, so that able candidates are not excluded by the cost of travel.
Support onboarding and retention: assist with documentation, relocation, orientation and post-placement follow-up through the probationary period.
Advise on local labour realities: realistic pay expectations, skill availability, seasonality and retention conditions, per local government area.
Our recruitment ethic. Recruitment support is delivered under a written service agreement, and GELI charges the engaging employer, never the candidate . We do not accept payment, gifts or favours from applicants at any stage. We do not guarantee outcomes in exchange for anything. Any member of our personnel found soliciting from a candidate is dismissed and reported. Shortlisting is on merit against the criteria the employer sets, and candidate data is used only for the vacancy the candidate consented to.
04: FOR COMMERCIAL COMPANIES AND BRANDS
For commercial companies whose products and services cannot currently reach the hard-to-reach local government areas, GELI provides a credible route to market built on people the community already trusts.
Mobilise the right local partners: identify, brief and coordinate the community influencers, traditional and religious leaders, women's groups, youth associations, cooperatives, agro-dealers and retailers through whom a product can be introduced with credibility.
Recruit and supervise community promoters: engage, train and manage brand ambassadors, demonstrators and sales agents drawn from the target community itself, so the message arrives in the right voice and the right language.
Run awareness and demonstration activations: product education, live demonstration and question-and-answer sessions in markets, ward centres, motor parks and community gatherings.
Scope the market: consumer demand, purchasing patterns, pricing sensitivity, seasonality, existing distribution and competitor presence, LGA by LGA.
Map distribution and retail: identify outlets, wholesalers and last-mile logistics options, and coordinate delivery into locations a company cannot itself access.
Report on results: reach, uptake, consumer feedback and recommendations, with photographic and attendance evidence.
Our commercial ethic. All commercial activation is carried out in line with community norms, with the knowledge and consent of local authorities, and under the same safeguarding, data-protection and ethical-marketing standards as our development work. We will not promote any product or service that is unlawful, unsafe, misleading, exploitative in its pricing or credit terms, or otherwise harmful to the communities we serve and we will say so before a contract is signed, rather than after.
05: FUNDED BY GELI, FREE TO EVERY PARTICIPANT
Beyond the work we do for partners and clients, GELI initiates and funds its own projects targeting the most vulnerable and least-informed people in the state: the out-of-school children of displaced families, unemployed youth, and communities without access to basic care or reliable information.
getting displaced and out-of-school children back into learning through foundational literacy and numeracy support, learning materials and community-based education. Our flagship education project is the Catch-Up Learning Programme.
supporting basic health awareness, hygiene, nutrition and access to care for vulnerable women and children.
a continuing, management-funded programme in job-opportunity awareness, federal government programmes and interventions, basic computer and AI literacy, and contemporary issues.
GELI'S SELF-FUNDED COMMUNITY PROGRAMME
GELI's management funds and delivers at no cost whatsoever to participants, a continuing programme of training, orientation and public awareness for young people and community members across Zamfara State.
This programme is not donor-dependent and is not contingent on winning a contract. It is financed by the organisation's management as a deliberate investment in the state's people, and it runs whether or not a partner project is in place.
It exists because the gap it addresses is one nobody has been paid to close. Opportunity is announced in places our communities cannot hear it. Government interventions are wrapped in procedure that nobody explains. The labour market has gone digital while whole wards have never touched a keyboard. And the issues shaping daily life are discussed everywhere except where their consequences land hardest.
Making visible the employment, apprenticeship and self-employment opportunities that exist in and beyond the state, and equipping participants to compete for them.
Participants gain: knowledge of live vacancies, recruitment cycles and employer expectations; CV and application writing; interview preparation; credential and documentation readiness; how and where to search safely; and how to recognise and refuse recruitment scams and "pay-for-a-job" fraud.
Explaining, in plain Hausa and English, the federal and state programmes, loans, grants, stipends, skills schemes and recruitment drives that participants are entitled to apply for.
Participants gain: a practical understanding of what each programme offers, who qualifies, which documents are required, how and when to register, where to verify authenticity, and how to bypass the middlemen and impostors who charge for access to free schemes.
Foundational digital skills and an honest, practical first introduction to AI tools designed for people who may never have used a computer.
Participants gain: keyboard, file and folder basics; word processing, spreadsheets and presentations; email, internet search and safe browsing; smartphone productivity; how to use AI assistants responsibly for writing, learning, job search and small business; and a clear-eyed grounding in online safety, privacy, misinformation and the limits of AI.
Helping communities understand and respond to the issues shaping their lives right now.
Participants gain: civic responsibility and rights; peace, security consciousness and community cohesion; the value of education and of keeping children in school; health, hygiene and nutrition awareness; substance abuse prevention; climate and environmental change; digital fraud and misinformation awareness; and the participation of women and girls in community and economic life.
In Hausa and English, by GELI personnel drawn from the participants' own local government areas, so instruction arrives in a familiar voice.
In accessible community venues; schools, ward centres, skills acquisition centres, and religious and traditional gathering places so that participation costs nothing but time.
Completely free of charge; no tuition, no registration fee, no "form fee", no material fee and no condition of any kind.
Open to young men and women alike, with deliberate outreach to girls, out-of-school youth, persons with disabilities and displaced people.
Computer and AI literacy delivered using GELI's own equipment and, where power or connectivity is limited, in offline-capable formats.
Structured with attendance records, pre- and post-session assessment and follow-up, so that impact can be evidenced rather than assumed.
Under the same safeguarding, consent and data-protection standards as every other GELI activity, including written consent for participation and for the use of photographs.
Why we fund it ourselves. Three reasons. It is the right thing to do, and it needed doing. It builds and continually refreshes the talent pool that our recruitment clients draw on which means the young person we train today is the candidate we can credibly present tomorrow. And it earns our field teams the standing in the community that makes every other kind of work possible, because our relationship with a community does not begin and end with a project cycle.
OUR WORK
This is where our work lives. Every programme we run whether funded by GELI's own management or delivered on behalf of a partner is documented here, with honest updates as it progresses.
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A free, thirteen-week foundational learning programme in Hausa reading and early mathematics designed for children whose education was interrupted by insecurity and displacement, and delivered at weekends in their own communities by facilitators from those communities.
Twenty-six lessons. Two subjects. Thirty-five minutes each. No fees, no uniform, no entrance test, and no child turned away.
13
Weeks
26
Lessons
2
Subjects
Free
For Families
GELI'S INAUGURAL PROJECT · ZAMFARA STATE, NIGERIA
Thirteen weeks. Twenty-six lessons. One child at a time, back into learning.
Duration
13 weeks · 26 lessons
Subjects
Hausa literacy · Foundational mathematics
Who it's for
Displaced and out-of-school children.
Cost to families
Free, funded by GELI
Why this programme exists
Across Zamfara State, insecurity has emptied villages. Families who farmed the same land for generations have walked away from it, arriving in local government headquarters and urban centres with whatever they could carry. What they could not carry was their children's education.
The school is still standing in the village they left. But they are not in the village any more.
So the children wait. Some for a term. Some for a year. Some for longer than anyone intended. And with every month that passes, what they had already learned quietly drains away the letters, the numbers, the confidence, the habit of sitting down and concentrating. A child who could read her own name in Primary 3 cannot recognise a single letter eighteen months later. That is not a failure of the child. It is what happens when learning simply stops.
And here is the cruelty of it: by the time a place is finally found for that child in a school, she has fallen so far behind her age group that the classroom becomes a humiliation rather than an opportunity. Many drop out within weeks. Some never enrol at all. Girls are lost first, and lost fastest.
“These are not children who failed at school. They are children whom school stopped being available to.”
A displaced child does not need a full curriculum to start again. She needs a bridge, a short, focused, achievable programme that rebuilds the foundations she has lost, restores her confidence, and hands her back to the formal school system ready to keep up.
That bridge did not exist in Zamfara at any scale. Formal schools are stretched beyond capacity and cannot run remedial streams. Most donor programmes cannot reach the affected LGAs. And the families themselves have nothing left to pay with.
So GELI built it. And GELI is funding it.
The Programme
The GELI Catch-Up Learning Programme is a free, thirteen-week foundational learning programme for children whose education has been interrupted by conflict, displacement or disadvantage.
It teaches two subjects: Hausa literacy and foundational mathematics through twenty-six carefully sequenced lessons of thirty-five minutes each, delivered two lessons per weekend so that no child has to choose between the programme and whatever else their family needs from them.
It runs where the children already are: in ward centres, community spaces, borrowed classrooms, mosque and church halls, and under trees. It is taught in Hausa, in the children's own first language, by facilitators recruited from the children's own communities and trained by GELI over four full days.
Short enough to finish. Long enough to change something. A child who completes the programme has a visible, dated achievement and so does the family who sent her.
Every lesson follows the same six-part rhythm, so children always know what is coming next. Predictability is not a limitation here for a child who has lost her routine, it is the point.
The facilitator is not a stranger flown in for a project cycle. She is from the ward. Parents know her family. That is why children are allowed to come.
No tuition. No registration. No "form fee". No uniform requirement. No material fee. No condition of any kind. Funded by GELI's own management.
Girls and boys equally, with deliberate outreach to girls, to children with disabilities, and to the children of displaced families. No entrance test. No child turned away.
Two adults present at every session. No unsupervised one-to-one contact. Written parent or guardian consent for participation and for any photograph. A named focal point in every community.
The Method
Most reading programmes that reach Northern Nigeria are English-language methods with Hausa words dropped into them. They teach children to sound out isolated consonants "nnn", "kkk" because that is how English phonics works.
Hausa does not work that way. And our programme was designed around that fact from the first page.
In the Hausa abakada system, the name of a consonant is that consonant plus a: n is "na", k is "ka", ts is "tsa".
The letter name is therefore already a readable syllable. And two syllables make a word.
na + na = Nana
ka + ka = kaka
This is why children on our programme read real Hausa words within the first fortnight not nonsense drills, not English-shaped sounds, but their own grandmother's name. It is a moment facilitators are trained to stop and mark, because it is usually the moment a child decides she can do this after all.
The programme teaches the vowels first (a e i o u), then introduces consonants in carefully chosen pairs; n k, then m b, then l g, then s t, with a review week at the halfway point and another at the end. Every word bank is strictly cumulative: a child is never asked to read a word containing a letter she has not yet been taught. Nothing is set up to fail.
Week 6
Muna nan
"We are here."
Week 13
Muna zuwa makaranta
"We are going to school."
The last sentence a child reads on this programme is a sentence about going back to school. That is not an accident.
The mathematics strand mirrors the literacy strand exactly: same thirteen weeks, same twenty-six lessons, same thirty-five-minute frame, same children, same facilitators.
It is governed by two unbreakable rules:
Real objects, then pictures, then the written numeral. Always in that order. Never start a child with the abstract symbol alone.
Always teach the quantity and the numeral together. Never a numeral in isolation. This is the single most important rule in the guide.
The sequence moves from counting and one-to-one correspondence to twenty, through comparing and ordering, numeral formation and number bonds within five, addition within five and then ten, teen numbers explicitly linked to the Hausa goma sha X ("ten-and-X") construction that makes teen numbers logical rather than arbitrary then subtraction, fact families, and finally addition and subtraction within twenty with one-step word problems drawn from the market, the household and the farm.
By the final week, a child who arrived unable to count reliably to ten can count, read and write numbers to twenty, compare quantities, and add and subtract within twenty using problems that sound like her own life.
Every one of the twenty-six lessons in both subjects follows the identical six-segment rhythm:
Notice where the time goes. The longest segment is not instruction, it is play. Eleven of thirty-five minutes are games, drawn from a bank of fourteen for literacy and fourteen more for numeracy: Da'irar Ƙidaya (Counting Circle), Kanti (The Market Game), Neman Aboki (Find Your Partner), Layin Lambobi (Number Line Hopscotch), and more.
This is deliberate. These children have been out of school for months or years. Many associate learning with failure, and several have experienced things no child should. A programme that opens with a song, spends a third of its time playing, and closes with a story is not a soft programme, it is a programme designed by people who understand that a frightened child does not learn.
And every single game carries an explicit "Adapting for mixed ages" note, because a catch-up class is never one age group. A seven-year-old and a twelve-year-old will sit in the same circle. Both must leave having been stretched.
The Facilitators
A programme is only ever as good as the person standing in front of the circle.
GELI recruits facilitators from the very communities the classes will serve, educated indigenes who already live in the ward, speak the language natively, and are known to the families whose children will attend. That last point is not sentimentality. In a community that has learned to be cautious about strangers, a facilitator whose family is known is the difference between a child being allowed to attend and a child being kept at home.
The six-segment lesson frame; the abakada method and why isolated consonant sounds are prohibited; story selection; the full fourteen-game Literacy Games Bank, walked through and practised; attendance recording; learner mobilisation and how to run a parent sensitisation meeting; a ninety-five-minute safeguarding block; and a full lesson simulation with structured peer feedback.
The numeracy lesson frame and its two governing rules; the fourteen-game Numeracy Games Bank; the counting, addition and subtraction chants; the physical kit; counters, number cards, ten-frame, number line; supporting struggling learners; adapting word problems across mixed ages; a numeracy-specific safeguarding refresher; a second full lesson simulation; and the logistics of running both subjects week by week.
Facilitators do not receive a syllabus and a wish. They receive:
Jagorar Malami, Hausa edition
Thirteen-week foundational mathematics guide
Four-day training manual for GELI facilitators
The English Teacher's Guide, all thirteen weeks, all twenty-six literacy lessons, fully scripted.
The Hausa edition, Jagorar Malami, a complete Hausa-language edition, so a facilitator can teach in the language she thinks in.
The Foundational Mathematics Teacher's Guide: all thirteen weeks, all twenty-six numeracy lessons, fully scripted.
The Facilitator Training Manual, the full four-day course, with a printable one-page Safeguarding Quick Card.
Every lesson is scripted to the level of what to say and what to watch for including the predictable mistakes children make and how to respond to them. A facilitator never has to guess. And a supervisor visiting a class always knows exactly what should be happening at minute nineteen.
Written, tested and ready.
All four documents already exist. The literacy guide runs to eighty-three pages, its Hausa edition to ninety-nine, the mathematics guide to seventy-three, and the facilitator manual to forty-six. This is not a programme concept seeking funding to be designed. It is a designed programme seeking the reach it deserves.
This programme brings adults into contact with children who are, by definition, among the most vulnerable in the state; displaced, out of school, and in many cases separated from the adults who used to protect them.
We treat that responsibility as coming before everything else, including the programme itself.
A two-adult rule applies to every session. There is no unsupervised one-to-one contact with a child, at any time, for any reason.
Written parent or guardian consent is required for a child's participation, and a separate, specific, revocable written consent is required before any photograph or film is taken. Photographs are never used in a way that could place a child at risk.
Identity and address verification, credential checks, a specific safeguarding reference, disclosure of any prior disciplinary history, and confirmation of standing in the candidate's own community.
Every facilitator signs GELI's Code of Conduct and PSEAH commitment before meeting a single child, and completes safeguarding training as part of the four-day course.
Every community where the programme runs has a named Safeguarding Focal Point, with an opposite-gender alternate, so that girls always have a woman they can go to.
Confidential routes publicised in Hausa and English, in formats that work for people who cannot read.
Even the Storytime segment is governed: facilitators are prohibited from selecting stories involving violence, fleeing, fire or the loss of a parent. These children have lived those stories. The programme does not re-tell them.
Safeguarding takes precedence over programme delivery, over reputation and over convenience. If those two things ever conflict, safeguarding wins.
She arrives having lost the letters. She leaves reading simple Hausa sentences aloud, counting and writing to twenty, and adding and subtracting with confidence.
But the measurable part is not the whole of it. She also leaves having sat still in a circle for thirteen weeks, having answered a question in front of other children and been right, having been expected somewhere every weekend. For a child whose year has been defined by what was taken from her, being expected somewhere is not a small thing.
Most importantly, she leaves ready to be reintegrated into formal school not as the child who is embarrassingly behind, but as a child who can keep up.
A displaced family carries a specific kind of grief about their children's education: the sense that whatever else they salvage, this particular thing is gone. The programme returns it, at no cost, without asking the family for anything they do not have.
It also brings parents into the picture deliberately. Facilitators run a sensitisation meeting before classes begin, and parents are given a clear account of what their child will learn and when. Parents who see progress in thirteen weeks re-enrol children in formal school. That is the real prize.
Every class is taught by someone from that community, using materials in that community's language, in a space that community provided. The programme is not something done to a community, it is something the community hosts. Traditional and religious leaders are engaged before the first lesson, not informed after it.
And each class creates paid, dignified work for an educated young indigene who might otherwise be sitting at home.
Every child returned to formal school is one child fewer in the out-of-school statistic that will define this state's next twenty years. Thirteen weeks is a short intervention. Not going to school is a life sentence.
What we will measure
We are ready to expand on day one. Because the curriculum, the guides and the training course are already written, adding a new location does not require a new design phase. It requires a venue, a trained facilitator from that ward, a kit of materials, and the modest cost of running a circle for thirteen weeks. Every additional partner directly translates into additional circles and additional children.
We keep this deliberately transparent, because partners deserve to know exactly what their support buys.
GELI funds this programme from its own resources because it needed doing and nobody was doing it. But our own resources set the ceiling and the ceiling is far below the need.
If you are a donor, a foundation, a company with a CSR commitment, a government agency, a diaspora group or an individual who cannot stand the thought of a nine-year-old forgetting how to read: this is a programme that is designed, written, costed and ready. It needs reach.
Stay informed
The full suite of programme materials is finished: a thirteen-week Hausa literacy Teacher's Guide in both English and Hausa editions, a matching Foundational Mathematics Teacher's Guide, and a four-day Facilitator Training Manual covering both subjects. The programme is ready for its first cohort.
Receive updates about this programme as the first cohort progresses.
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Gusau, Zamfara State, Nigeria.
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