Mary Dinah

"The Mary Dinah foundation started in 2006 with the school feeding project. Before then, we were doing a job link in London, helping women and girls who were homeless and on drugs in East London. We were not registered at the time but it was something that had started."

"For our first charity project, we worked with another charity called Door of Hope, and other registered charities in the UK. It was just me and one or two other people. So, that was my first work as a humanitarian. We would go out into the street at night in the freezing cold to offer tea or coffee and biscuits to women on the streets. I did that for some years."

"We started with Anglican Girls Seminary School and Christ Church School on Broad Street. We did that for a few years and then the pandemic hit. We had to re-strategize when we realised that the Northeast had the greatest humanitarian crisis. People couldn’t get food into the villages because the roads were bad and the networks were affected by terrorist activities that has gone on for about 12 years."

"So, we partnered with a few international organizations, and donors and we were able to significantly increase our giving, which was 100,000 meals per year, to no less than 28 million meals over the last three years. At the moment, we are distributing about 16 million meals every year. My personal goal is to get to about a billion meals."

"I set up the Mary Dinah Foundation 5 years ago and that has been amazingly satisfying. I have started very successful companies in the past that generated significant income but creating a channel whereby I could make a change and impact the lives of others is bigger than anything I have ever experienced before. It still is my greatest high point in life."

"Through the foundation, we connected over 10,000 youths to gainful employment and trained more than 3,000 students in Lagos on employability skills. What we have achieved is incredible and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to support my community."