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From struggling to identify the alphabet to reading and writing, children at a community-led school in Benue State are rebuilding their education after displacement. But retaining pupils and sustaining learning remain challenges.
Ten-year-old Amos Terkura’s journey to learning began after he lost his father and fled his community with his mother, Erdoo Terkura, following an attack in November 2021.
For the young boy, reaching an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp at Tse-Yandev, Benue State, meant escaping violence, but it did not immediately restore the childhood opportunities he had lost. Before his displacement, his education had already been disrupted by insecurity and his family’s inability to afford schooling.
When his mother enrolled him in a community-led school in December 2021, Amos struggled to identify even the English alphabet. Today, he says he can read and write, having progressed from recognising letters to forming words and completing dictation exercises.
Amos Terkura when he joined the school in 2021
His mother said his improvement has become one of the main reasons she is reluctant to move her family to another camp whenever the opportunity arises.
“One of the reasons I don’t want to relocate my family from this camp to another is what this school is doing for my child,” she told DUBAWA. “Since he started, he has been catching up. My son, who could not differentiate A, B, and C, can now read and write.”
For her, the change is visible beyond the classroom. She said she sometimes watches Amos attempt to read newspapers or the Bible, moments that fill her with happiness because of how much he has progressed.
“Anytime I see him attempting to read a newspaper or even the Bible, I feel different, and my happiness knows no bounds,” she said.
Amos’s experience illustrates how a community-led education initiative helps displaced children build foundational literacy and numeracy skills when insecurity, poverty, and disrupted schooling threaten their education.
The Fortress of the Vulnerable Child Rescue Initiative, which began operating in 2021, provides education for children in displacement settings through a learning model that prioritises basic reading and arithmetic while accommodating pupils with different levels of prior learning.
The initiative’s founder, Amos Terhumba Agber, said the organisation enrolled 750 children when it started. However, the number now stands at 425 pupils across seven classes.
The decline reflects, in part, families being displaced as they move between camps and communities. Some children leave with their parents to find safer accommodation or livelihoods, while others join the programme after arriving at the camp.
The school has continued to operate despite these movements, but its experience raises a central question in educating displaced children: how can pupils recover lost learning when their lives remain unsettled?
Displaced children learning at the Tse-Yandev IDP camp.
A school created to fill the gap
Agber, a sociologist living near the camp, said the idea for the initiative emerged in November 2021, when he visited an IDP camp and found children roaming around during school hours.
When he asked their parents why the children were not attending school, some said they could not afford the costs, while others were more concerned about finding food and meeting their families’ immediate needs.
The experience prompted him to consider how to make education accessible.
His initial plan was to raise money to enrol the children in nearby public schools. However, he estimated that registering more than 500 children would cost about ₦7.5 million at ₦15,000 per child, before accounting for additional learning materials and other expenses.
Unable to raise the amount quickly, he decided to establish a learning space inside the camp and recruit volunteer teachers.
Displaced children learning at the Tse-Yandev IDP camp.
With support from five friends, he launched the initiative in November 2021. Instead of organising pupils strictly by conventional primary school grades, the teachers grouped them by their current learning abilities.
Some could identify letters but struggled to write them. Others could not recognise the alphabet, while some could read simple words but needed help with reading comprehension.
“We had to group the children according to their literacy levels,” Agber explained. “We discovered that some could identify the alphabet, some could not, and some could identify even two-letter words.”
The arrangement let teachers focus on the specific skills each group needed to develop.
The school also adopted a focused curriculum. Rather than attempting to teach all the subjects offered in conventional primary schools, it prioritised literacy and numeracy, which Agber considered essential for further learning.
“We are not concerned about taking nine or 10 subjects and teaching these children as they do in regular primary schools in town,” he said. “The child in the camp is thinking about hunger, what to eat, what to wear and all these things.”
He explained that displaced children may struggle to concentrate because of the uncertainty in their daily lives. The school therefore seeks to use the time available to help them develop basic skills they can build on later.
“We want to ensure that any child who stays with us for a full session, irrespective of their class or reading level before they came, has greatly improved their reading skills,” he said.
“Because if you can read and do basic arithmetic, you can find your way around schooling and life generally.”
For Amos, that approach meant progressing through stages rather than being expected to learn everything at once.
Amos Terkura
“Our teachers are friendly, and they treat us like their blood brothers and children,” he said. “At the beginning, it was difficult for me. It took months before I could catch up, but with a lot of effort and my mother’s prayers, I caught up.”
He described the progression from identifying letters to reading words and writing them during dictation exercises.
“I started with identifying the alphabet, then two-letter words, three-letter words and then dictation. I can read and write now,” he said.
His account offers a specific example of how the school’s teaching approach has helped a pupil who initially struggled with foundational literacy.
Why the progress matters to families
For Amos’s mother, the school’s value is tied to the education she had struggled to provide before displacement.
She said she could not afford to send him to school, while recurring violence in and around their community disrupted public education and discouraged teachers from remaining at their posts.
“Even before we came from our community to this camp, I could not afford to send him to school. The public schools close to our community were also being disrupted by recurring crises and violence, which made many teachers avoid the schools,” she said.
Against that background, she considers her son’s enrolment in the camp school a turning point.
“Coming to this camp has been a blessing in disguise because this school is changing my son’s life,” she said.
She hopes the progress will continue beyond the foundational skills he has acquired.
“I want him to go to school up to the university,” she added.
Her account also shows how access to education can influence the decisions displaced families make about where to live. While families may need to move for safety, shelter or work, the availability of a functioning school can become an important consideration.
Progress beyond the alphabet
The founder said the initiative has supported some pupils beyond the earliest stages of primary education.
According to Agber, about 20 pupils have completed Basic 6, the final year of primary school, and progressed to Basic 7, equivalent to Junior Secondary School 1 under Nigeria’s basic education structure.
The reported transition suggests that the initiative’s work has extended beyond introductory literacy lessons for at least some pupils.
The current enrolment of 425 pupils across seven classes also shows that the initiative continues to serve a substantial number of children, even though its population has changed since it began.
Agber said the school now runs from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., with about 15 people involved in teaching and other school activities.
Its physical learning environment has also improved. The founder said a Christian charity organisation, International Christian Concern (ICC), supported the construction of classrooms at Ichua in 2023, replacing the earlier arrangement in which classes were held in a makeshift space.
Fortress of the Vulnerable Child Rescue Initiative’s building
The broader context underscores the importance of this initiative. The UNICEF Nigeria humanitarian appeal for 2026 identifies conflict, communal violence, and displacement as continuing barriers to children’s education across the country.
According to the IOM Round 18 IDP Atlas, Benue State hosted 464,543 internally displaced persons (IDPs) as of October 2025, accounting for roughly 34% of the total displaced population across the North-Central and North-West regions. This figure covers displaced people across Benue, not just children or camp residents served by the initiative.
Fortress of the Vulnerable Child Rescue Initiative’s building
The school is therefore addressing one part of a much wider challenge by helping children continue learning when conflict has separated them from their homes, communities and established schools.
The challenge of keeping displaced children in school
Despite its reported progress, the initiative struggles to retain pupils as displaced families move between camps and communities.
Agber said the number of children currently enrolled has fallen from the 750 documented for enrolment when the programme began in 2021. He attributed much of the change to families moving in search of safety, shelter and livelihoods.
“Some displaced people have moved to larger settlements where shelter and other assistance are available. Others have relocated to places where they hope to find work and provide for their families,” Agber said.
For children, these movements can disrupt the continuity of their education. A pupil who has begun to read confidently may struggle to maintain that progress after moving to a location where access to schooling is limited. Agber said the initiative cannot always track pupils once they leave the camp, making it difficult to know whether they continue their education elsewhere.
Ibrahim Mustapha, a graduate of Primary Education from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, said the movement of displaced families makes it difficult for schools like this to ensure children continue learning after relocation.
“One of the major challenges of educating displaced children is that their families are constantly on the move. A child may be making progress in school, but when the family relocates to another community where access to education is limited, that progress can be disrupted,” he said.
Mustapha said the school could strengthen its response by keeping more systematic records of pupils’ learning levels, attendance and progress, as well as tracking where they go when their families leave the camp.
“This would help the school know whether they are continuing their education or have dropped out. With proper records, the initiative could also identify children who need help to continue learning after relocation,” he said.
He also recommended collaboration with nearby public schools and education authorities to make it easier for pupils to transfer into other learning environments when their families move.
“If these arrangements are in place, children will have a better chance of building on what they have already learnt instead of losing their progress or dropping out of school,” he said.
A solution constrained by resources
The initiative’s other major limitation is the difficulty of maintaining its activities with irregular funding.
Agber said the organisation relies heavily on individual contributions after losing access to some institutional support. He also said that requirements such as audited accounts and other organisational documentation have made it harder to access some funding opportunities.
These constraints matter because the school needs resources to maintain its classes, provide learning materials and support the people teaching its pupils.
The founder said the monthly stipend for teachers and volunteers rose from ₦5,000 in the initiative’s early period to ₦20,000 in 2026. However, the current amount remains modest amid Nigeria’s rising living costs, and payments depend on the funds available to the organisation.
The increase therefore does not necessarily translate into meaningful financial security for the teachers, many of whom continue working despite their own personal needs.
Agber said a previous supporting organisation helped cover volunteer stipends but later withdrew that assistance because of other commitments. The initiative has since depended more heavily on individual contributions.
This funding uncertainty does not negate the reported learning gains, but it limits the programme’s ability to plan consistently for its teachers and pupils.
Despite these challenges, Agber said his ambition extends beyond helping displaced children regain basic literacy and numeracy. He wants the initiative to support them through secondary school and help them progress to higher education.
“Our vision is to continue training these children until they can sit for the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and guide them towards gaining admission into higher institutions of learning, where they can pursue greater dreams and aspirations,” he said.
This reporting was completed with the support of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) under the SAIL+ Programme Fellowship.