On March 11th, 2011, a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Japan triggered a tsunami that created a wave that devastated many of Japan's coastal towns, killed over 19,000 people and shook the world as its appeared one or more of Japan's nuclear reactors would meltdown and unleash a nuclear catastrophe. Okay, so why are we reminding you about this on a page about volunteer work in Nigeria? Bear with us! After the tsunami and the resulting devastation and chaos, an organisation delegation of volunteer Brits duly arrived in Japan offering to help. When asked what particular skills or knowledge they had to help, they replied that they were fluent in Japanese. Staff at the airport pointed out in return that there were already 127 million Japanese speakers on the islands and given they had no real other skills should go home as they would only get in the way and hinder the clean up operation.
Now that's a bit like Nigeria today. It has a massive population of 201 million (2019) and is on the cusp of becoming one
of the world's richest countries as oil revenues from the Niger Delta region begin to flow in (although that wealth is very unevenly spread with Nigeria being ranked in 2019 in 161st place out of 189 countries and territories when ranked in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a country.) With that population and incoming wealth, despite all the challenges the country faces, it pretty much has the resources to manage them without requiring foreigners to come in and help. That's not to say volunteer assistance isn't welcomed, its just not always needed and volunteer work should always be about the needs of the client group or individual not creating work to meet the needs of volunteers. As such there are not as many volunteer work
opportunities as you may expect in Nigeria.
Please note that many volunteer opportunities in Nigeria were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic which led to the permanent closure of some volunteer opportunities and restrictions on others. Hopefully things are now beginning to return to normal. If you run or
know of a volunteer work project in Nigeria let us know by
contacting us here. We look forward
to hearing from you!
Volunteer Work Nigeria: Small World Nigeria
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Volunteer Work Nigeria; Hands at Work
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Volunteer Work Nigeria: WWOOF Nigeria
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Volunteer Work Nigeria: ICYE Nigeria
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