Learn how you can be apart of helping people who are in need with our A Thrifty Mom Bag of Rice Campaign. In 2016 we started helping a young man named Ikechukwu from Nigeria. Summer of 2019 we were able to visit his family in Aba, Nigeria. While there we saw widespread poverty and lack of basic needs. We would like to invite you to help meet one of those basic needs, by providing Nigerian families with rice. This gift will feed a large family for a few months, or a single person a year. It also reminds them they are loved, and brings most of them to tears… as a full bag of rice is one of the most generous gifts they will ever receive. You can also read about other families we have been able to bless here.
The Following story is about the Okoko family, their bag of rice was donated thanks to Kari Loomis this is the 186th bag of rice our program has been able to give away thanks to generous donations.
We met this family in a village outside of Uyo, Nigeria. They were introduced to us by their village chief. The Okokos live in a one bedroom mud hut without electricity or plumbing and for water they fetch from a stream or collect rain water. The Okokos have 8 kids but most of them were not around. It’s usually customary for families in this kind of villages to send their children to a rich uncle in town or even to people they don’t know. This girls usually serve as maids and the boys usually apprentice to learn a skill or also serve as maids. I’m saying all these because seven of Mr Okokos kids are doing something like this and this goes a long way to explain the state this family is in.
Front view of their house 
Side view of their house
The Okokos cook with sticks in a semi open kitchen because it is the cheapest they can afford. Mr Okoko is a mason better known as a bricklayer in Nigeria. Its a back breaking work because they do everything manually with very little equipments. Mrs Okoko is a trader and she sells fruits at the local market. The Coronavirus has really affected their sources of income because of the lockdown and families like this usually have very little or no savings.
Their Kitchen
The Okokos were very happy to see us and even though it’s usually hard for Africans to show emotions when they realized that we were giving them the bag of Rice they were very visibly happy. I am very happy to bring some happiness to this families. They were grateful to those who doanted for them and I know that this bag of Rice will go a long way in helping this family.
The Okokos
Learn how you can be apart of helping people who are in need with our A Thrifty Mom Bag of Rice Campaign. You can also read about other families we have been able to bless here.
