December 2025 | Makurdi, Benue State

Internally displaced persons – particularly girls – live with compounding deprivation. Beyond food insecurity and lack of shelter, they lack access to basic menstrual hygiene products, clothing, and the simple dignities that most children take for granted. For girls in IDP camps, the approach of the festive season brings no comfort – only a sharper awareness of what they don’t have.

Menstrual health needs go unmet entirely, leaving girls to manage their periods without pads in already compromised sanitation conditions. Boys in the camps are equally overlooked – their grooming and sense of self left to deteriorate alongside everything else displacement strips away.

GEAN arrived at the Makurdi IDP camp not just to distribute items, but to show up fully. The team administered a multi-pronged outreach that included:

MENSTRUAL HEALTH

Distribution of sanitary pads to girls and women in the camp, ensuring they entered the Christmas season with access to basic menstrual hygiene products.

CLOTHING

Clothes were distributed to children and families, a practical gift that doubled as a visible affirmation of their dignity and worth.

HAIR CARE

Girls in the camp received hair braiding services; a deliberate, intentional act of care designed to make each girl feel seen, celebrated, and beautiful ahead of the festive season. On this occasion, boys were not left out, as they received barbing services, ensuring the outreach was holistic and that no child was left out of the experience of being cared for.

FESTIVE GIFTING

Additional Christmas gifts were distributed so that children in the camp could experience something of the festive season that displacement had otherwise made inaccessible.

“When we got to the camp, I didn’t expect the first thing to strike me to be the children’s faces. Not the conditions – the faces. The way they looked at us when they realised we had come for them. Not to study them. Not to take pictures and leave. But to actually be with them.

“Braiding a girl’s hair before Christmas feels small from the outside. But inside that camp, it was everything. It was her being allowed to feel like a child again: beautiful, worthy, celebrated. That is what GEAN is about. Not just pads. Not just clothes. But the fullness of a girl’s dignity.

“I left Makurdi knowing we have to go back. We have to keep going.”

~ Ene Oteikwu

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