Youth-led innovation, from community to national level.
Nudge Initiative for Community Development was born from a simple frustration: the communities most in need are rarely the ones being designed for. We're a youth-led NGO that decided to stop waiting for someone else to fix that.
We work at the intersection of public health, civic technology, and advocacy — building interventions in WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) and education access, principally across Northern Nigeria.
Our model is rooted in partnership. We work alongside communities, local government, public health institutions, civil society, and media — because lasting change requires a coalition, not a single actor.
"We don't parachute in with solutions. We arrive with questions — and we earn the right to build together."
In Arawa B and Malam Kuri communities, water collection is children's work — hours lost each day, school days skipped, risks taken at unsafe sources. WatAlive started by mapping the problem: ward by ward, borehole by borehole. Then we got to work.
We identify broken and non-functional boreholes, restore water access, and build community-owned data systems that make sure the work outlasts our presence.
A missed school fee is often the thing that ends a child's education. Not a lack of ambition — a gap of a few thousand naira at the wrong moment. We're building a platform that closes that gap at scale.
We are currently mapping fee-related dropout rates across Northern Nigerian wards, building the evidence base that will power direct connections between students at risk and donors ready to help.
Young Nigerians who chose to do something about it — researchers, field coordinators, policy advocates, and builders.
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