Advocacy: Giving the Voiceless a Voice.

Advocacy is the intentional act of speaking up, standing up, and taking action to defend and protect the rights of others. It means raising awareness about injustices, influencing policies, and amplifying voices that would otherwise remain unheard.

The Reality in Nigeria

In a nation of over 200 million people, violence, abuse, and systemic neglect remain widespread. According to UN Women, 1 in 3 Nigerian women aged 15-49 have experienced physical or sexual violence. Yet, many cases remain hidden due to fear, stigma, or lack of knowledge about where to seek help.

Why Advocacy Matters

Without advocacy, these realities remain buried. Without advocacy, oppressive laws remain unchallenged. Without advocacy, perpetrators remain empowered while victims are silenced and remain hurt for life.
For example, despite Nigeria’s Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act enacted in 2015, implementation across all states remains inconsistent, leaving countless victims without protection or justice.

The case of Ochanya Ogbanje, a 13-year-old girl raped to death by her guardian and his son, sparked outrage but revealed the system’s failure to protect vulnerable children till date.  The Chibok girls’ abduction showed how deeply systemic neglect and silence can endanger lives when no strong advocacy holds leaders accountable.

What CEAF is Doing

At Comfort Empowerment and Advocacy Foundation (CEAF), advocacy is the heartbeat of everything we do. We:

✔️ Raise awareness on gender-based violence, child marriage, and exploitation.
✔️ Partner with legal aid organizations like Headfort Foundation to ensure justice is accessible.
✔️ Train communities on prevention, safety, and reporting of abuse cases.
✔️ Amplify the voices of survivors through media campaigns, outreaches, and policy engagements.

School Drive (Education): Building Safer, Smarter Futures

Our School Drive initiative is a powerful combination of education and protection. It aims to educate students about abuse, raise awareness, and equip them with the knowledge to recognize and prevent it. Beyond that, it supports educational development by providing essential learning resources and tools to students who otherwise lack them.

The Reality in Nigeria
According to UNICEF, over 10.5 million children are out of school in Nigeria, the highest rate in the world. Those in school often lack basic resources, and many remain uninformed about their rights, safety, and protection against abuse or exploitation.

Why School Drive Matters
Education is not just about academic excellence , it is about empowerment, awareness, and protection. When children are informed about abuse, grooming, and their rights, they are better equipped to speak up, seek help, and stay safe. This has really helped and assisted some children in schools being talked to , and this made them open up on forms of abuse they are going through and they have received help through CEAF intervention.

Countless cases of s  chool-related abuse remain unreported because students lack knowledge of what constitutes abuse or where to seek help. Through our intervention, many lives have been put on track again.

Girls forced out of school due to early marriage or sexual exploitation lose their right to a secure and self-sustaining future.

What CEAF is Doing

Through our School Drive, CEAF:

✔️ Educates students about different forms of abuse and how to seek help.
✔️ Equips teachers and parents with knowledge to identify signs of abuse early.
✔️ Provides essential learning materials to underprivileged students.
✔️ Creates safer learning environments by fostering awareness, empathy, and vigilance in schools.

 Safe Shelter: A Haven for Healing and New Beginnings.

A safe shelter is more than just a place to sleep. It is a secure refuge that offers protection, dignity, and hope to survivors escaping violence, abuse, or exploitation. It is where broken lives begin to heal.

The Reality in Nigeria
According to Invictus Africa, Nigeria has only 21 officially recognized safe shelters for survivors of gender-based violence, despite its population of over 200 million. This means countless women and children remain trapped with their abusers, with nowhere else to go.

Why Safe Shelter Matters
Without a safe shelter, many victims have no choice but to remain in violent homes or end up on the streets, vulnerable to further harm. A safe shelter is often the difference between life and death.

In 2021 alone, the Nigerian Police recorded over 11,200 domestic violence cases, yet only a fraction of these survivors could access shelters for safety and recovery.

Survivors like Mary (name changed), who escaped her abusive husband only to live under a bridge with her children for weeks until a shelter took them in, show how critical these spaces are.

What CEAF is Doing

At CEAF, we are working to establish a Safe House that is more than a refuge. It will be a hub for healing, empowerment, and reintegration, providing:

✔️ Counseling and therapy to heal emotional trauma.
✔️ Skills acquisition programs for economic independence.
✔️ Legal aid and advocacy through strategic partnerships like Headfort Foundation.
✔️ A supportive community to remind survivors they are not alone.

Food Drive: Fighting Hunger, Restoring Dignity

Our Food Drive is another pillar that brings dignity and life-saving nourishment to families. In Nigeria, over 25 million people face hunger daily, with children and widows being the worst hit. Lack of food drives children into the streets to hawk, become prey to traffickers, or enter exploitative labor just to survive. Many women endure violent relationships simply because there is no means to feed their children otherwise.

What CEAF is Doing

We believe food is a basic right, not a privilege. Through our Food Drive, we feed hungry children in schools so they can focus on learning, we distribute food to widows and abused women in communities so they don’t have to endure violence for survival, and we provide relief to families during emergencies to restore dignity and hope. We don’t just give food; we restore humanity.

How You Can Help

🔴 Donate today. Support our school drive. Help us build safe shelters. Provide meals for the hungry. Partner with us to change lives.

Together, we can amplify voices through advocacy, empower children through education, protect survivors with safe shelter, and nourish lives through food drives.

💛 Let’s build a society where no one is left unheard, unprotected, uneducated, or unfed.
Act With CEAF: Feed, Protect, Educate, Empower.