Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with 140 million people belonging to hundreds of different ethnic and linguistic groups.   The country has vast and abundant natural resources, but the mineral and oil wealth has been squandered by successive rulers.  There is still much wealth in the country but also many who are very poor.  Official statistics record over a third of the population living below the poverty line.   In Nigeria, World In Need works in partnership with UNICCHYD (the Universal Centre for Children and Youth Development) to reach those most in need, the street children and the refugees. Their current effort is directed towards providing educational opportunities for orphans and at risk children and youths aged five to seventeen, who live in slums in the Lagos suburbs. Very often, these children have lost either one or both parents, and are forced to fend for themselves and their younger siblings through street begging.  As a result, they have to leave school in order to earn enough for a meal.   Other children targeted by UNICCHYD are those running from the cruelty and forced labour of adult relatives or unrelated guardians they now live with after the loss of their parents. Particularly vulnerable are some of the female children who are forced into commercial sex in order to make a living and who end up pregnant, or with HIV/AIDS.   World in Need Nigeria began pilot child sponsorship projects in each of these communities and now has 24 children who are supported locally.