By Boluwatife Adedokun
The Hope for Children Left Behind Initiative (HCLBI) has commenced a six-month learning programme aimed at equipping young people with practical knowledge on child rights, safeguarding and ethical advocacy for children of incarcerated parents.
The programme, known as WAMIRI 1.0 and themed “Turning Shared Perspectives into Practical Social Change”, began with an internal youth training session in Abuja on Saturday.
The session, facilitated by development journalist and educator Raphael Obasioha, focused on safeguarding, child rights, ethical storytelling, consent and the responsibilities of advocates working with children affected by parental incarceration.
Obasioha urged participants to avoid making assumptions about children whose parents are incarcerated, stressing that effective advocacy must be built around listening and understanding individual experiences.
“Effective advocacy must begin with listening rather than assuming,” he said. “The child is not the crime of the parent, and the child is bigger than the pain or the circumstances that brought you to them.”
He said parental incarceration could affect children’s education, finances and emotional wellbeing, but cautioned that the needs of affected children differ from one individual to another.
Obasioha also warned advocates against exposing children’s vulnerabilities for publicity, urging them to consider the long-term consequences before sharing a child’s story, photograph or video.
“Sometimes the post gets attention, people donate, and an organisation gets visibility, but we have to ask what the child paid for that attention and what the child sacrificed for it,” he said.
He stressed that ethical storytelling should apply not only to journalists but also to charities, social justice advocates and social media content creators working with vulnerable children.
According to him, a child’s willingness to participate does not automatically amount to informed consent, while advocates should also avoid language that defines children by their parents’ incarceration.
Speaking on the initiative, HCLBI Executive Director, Zainab Adewale, said WAMIRI was created to provide people from different professional backgrounds with the knowledge and practical skills needed to contribute meaningfully to child-focused social change.
Adewale explained that the name WAMIRI was derived from the Yoruba phrase “wá mi rí”, meaning lost and found, reflecting the organisation’s mission to reconnect with children who are often overlooked because of their parents’ incarceration.
“We designed the programme because we believe that people can care deeply about an issue and still need the right knowledge to act on it,” Adewale said.
“We want to create a space where people can learn from different professionals, share perspectives and leave with something they can actually use to create change,” she added.
She said the August session was an internal youth training, while monthly sessions would be opened to members of the public from September for the remaining five months of the programme.
“This first training is just the beginning of WAMIRI 1.0. From September, we will open the sessions to members of the public and bring in professionals from areas such as media, communications, child rights, safeguarding, policy and programme implementation because we need different perspectives if we are serious about creating meaningful change for children,” she said.
Adewale said collaboration across different fields was necessary because the challenges faced by children of incarcerated parents are complex and cannot be addressed from a single perspective.
“The issues affecting these children are not one-dimensional, so the people working to address them cannot all think from the same angle,” she said.
HCLBI said WAMIRI is expected to develop into a learning and collaboration platform where participants can gain the knowledge, relationships and confidence needed to respond to social challenges affecting children.
The Hope for Children Left Behind Initiative is a child-focused advocacy organisation working to promote the rights and wellbeing of children affected by parental incarceration in Nigeria. Its work includes advocacy, education, psychosocial support, welfare, partnerships and research.
