On January 31, Anja Ringgren Love, the founder of the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation, posted a series of photos to her organization’s Facebook page showing a starving 2-year-old boy, naked and wandering the streets of Nigeria alone because he’d been labeled a witch by his family, a common problem in the villages she serves.
Anja quickly learned the boy had been eating scraps thrown to him for 8 months. His little, fragile body was riddled with worms from the scraps he’d been surviving off of. She took him in, making sure he received proper medical care and nutrition to nurse him back to health. Anja also gave him the name, “Hope.”
The photos she posted on her Facebook page spread like wildfire across the globe and within just two days over 1 million dollars had been donated to the children’s center she runs.
Anja says Hope is recovering very well. His body is responding to medication, his worms are now gone and he’s eating on his own.
Anja’s non-profit gives African Children who’ve been abandoned access to food, medical treatment and schooling. She said besides giving Hope the best chance of a better life, they are now planning to build a doctor’s clinic to help save even more children.