2025
Annual Report.

Friends of the Foundation,

Peter Nwomeh was a teacher in Ozalla who believed that a single student given access to education could change the direction of an entire family, and in time, an entire community. That belief is not a slogan for us. It is the test we apply to our work. Every year we ask whether what we did moved a life — a scholar through to graduation, a woman into a viable business, a young tradesperson into a livelihood. 2025 was a year in which we can answer yes and point to the people.

We will not overstate what a foundation of our size can do. The need in our communities is far larger than our means. However, we have come to believe that doing this work well — selecting carefully, covering real costs, monitoring progress — is what matters. A scholarship withdrawn for poor performance, a grant tracked to its outcome, an apprentice inducted under a signed contract: these are the unglamorous habits that make the trust placed in us by donors worth keeping.

This year we supported scholars across Ozalla, Obe, and the wider Nkanu communities; we put resources directly into the hands of women; we fed families during the lean season; and we moved young people into skills programs that lead somewhere. We did none of it alone. We did it alongside community partners — Ozalla Development Union, Ozalla Forum, Ozalla Youths Forum, Ozalla Youths in Diaspora, and donors in Nigeria and abroad who chose to invest in students they may never meet.

What follows is an account of the year 2025, offered in the spirit Peter and Margaret Nwomeh modeled — quiet service, honestly reported — and in gratitude to everyone who made it possible.

With thanks,

The Peter and Margaret Nwomeh Foundation

Old Four Corners, Ozalla, Nkanu West LGA, Enugu State

The Peter and Margaret Nwomeh Foundation (PNF) is an educational and community development organization serving Ozalla, Obe, and the surrounding Nkanu communities of Enugu State, Nigeria. The Foundation was launched in 2014 and has awarded scholarships since 2016. We have expanded to four program areas: Scholarships, Poverty Relief, Skills Training, and Community Development. Our community development and poverty relief work is carried forward under the Ezinne Margaret Nwomeh Community Projects (ECP), named in honor of Margaret Nwomeh.

The Foundation operates through two affiliated organizations: PNF Nigeria and PNFUSA, a U.S. 501(c)(3) organization through which donations are tax-deductible for U.S. donors. In 2024, the Foundation adopted its current name — The Peter and Margaret Nwomeh Foundation — to honor their collective legacy of community service and support for education.

Across both organizations and more than a decade of sustained giving, the Foundation has supported over forty scholars. In 2025, that work continued on two parallel tracks. PNF has supported undergraduates from Ozalla in fields including law, physiology, and medical rehabilitation at the University of Nigeria, Ebonyi State University, and Nnamdi Azikiwe University. PNFUSA supported a growing cohort of undergraduate and postgraduate scholars in medicine, medical rehabilitation, computer science, accounting, philosophy, physiotherapy, medical laboratory science, mechanical engineering, and survey sciences — at institutions including the University of Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, ESUT, and the University of Port Harcourt.

The Foundation runs four named scholarship awards: the Peter Nwomeh Scholars Award for undergraduates from Ozalla; the Francis Onyia Scholars Award, now including a postgraduate tier for Ozalla students pursuing advanced degrees; the Okorienta Nwachukwuowo Scholars Award for undergraduates from Obe; and the Thomas Egbo Scholars Award for undergraduates from other Nkanu towns. Scholarship values have grown steadily, from ₦100,000 per session in 2016 to ₦250,000 today, with postgraduate recipients also receiving ₦250,000.

Scholars are required to maintain a minimum CGPA of 3.5 and to uphold the values the Foundation represents. We hold these standards seriously, including when it is difficult. Over the life of the program, a small number of awards have been withdrawn for insufficient academic performance.

PNF scholars, 2025

Economic hardship in our communities arrives concretely: a school fee unpaid, a harvest that falls short, a household that runs out before the month ends. Our poverty relief work, carried forward under the Ezinne Margaret Nwomeh Community Projects, meets that need directly.

Through the EmpowerHer Microfinance Grant, the Foundation puts financial resources directly into the hands of women in Okoruba-Ozalla through direct cash transfers. Women, in our experience, are among the most reliable stewards of household and community wellbeing. EmpowerHer does not ask them to prove it. It trusts it. The program's first round provided ₦20,000 grants to 25 women — used for entrepreneurial ventures, education costs, and essential household needs — and it has expanded its reach since.

Through Harvest of Hope, the Foundation provides food assistance to women and children in Ozalla, Obe, and Awkunanaw during the holiday season, distributing bags of rice valued at ₦30,000 to individual and village-group recipients in partnership with local organizations. It is rooted in a simple conviction: no family in our communities should go hungry during a season of celebration, and the most direct form of dignity is a full plate.

In communities where formal employment is scarce and university is not always the right path, vocational and technical skills offer a credible, dignified route to economic independence. The Foundation does not simply point young people toward programs — it identifies the opportunity, negotiates access, covers fees and transport, and follows up to ensure the investment lands.

Vocational apprenticeships. In 2025, the Foundation sponsored two Ozalla youths into formal trade apprenticeships under the Ozalla Youths Forum Skill Acquisition Program — one training in shoemaking, the other in hairdressing, makeup, and nail technology. Both were inducted under signed apprentice contracts. The Ozalla Youths Forum described the Foundation's support as proactive and generous. These are not large numbers. However, every trained tradesperson is a business owner in waiting, a family stabilized, and a skill that gets passed on.

Beauty-salon skills-training beneficiary Chinenye Anastasia Udeh and Chinedu Ignatius Okoro, Chair Ozalla Youth Forum (OYF) Skills Acquisition Committee. PNF partnered with OYF on this project.

Fashion and design. In 2025, the Foundation invested ₦1,000,000 in the Aba Fashion Future Program, a competitive, government-linked training initiative. Securing places required real effort from Foundation leadership — repeated trips to Aba, weeks of on-the-ground advocacy, and direct support for candidates' transport and lodging until they were formally enrolled. The result was several accepted candidates from Ozalla and a neighboring community, now training in one of Nigeria's leading fashion hubs.

Mmesoma Stella Mbagu, one of five Ozalla youth who completed the Fashion Future Program, here with a brand-new manual sewing machine, provided at no cost by MasterCard, a PNF partner.

Technology and animation. Through the PNF Tech Scholars initiative, the Foundation disbursed ₦628,000 in 2025 to support access to technology training, alongside individual grants to beneficiaries pursuing technical and creative careers. The Foundation funded a cohort of young people through the Emerging Technology Skills for Africa program — a fully virtual, six-month course in emerging tech skills run in partnership with the Enugu State Government — and connected community members to the Enugu Magic Labs Animation Training Program, which trains young people in 3D motion design and animation at a heavily subsidized rate.

Beyond any single figure, the Foundation has built durable relationships with the Ozalla Youths Forum, state training agencies, and program providers — relationships that create a pathway, not just a one-time grant.

The most durable community development happens not when an outside organization imposes a solution, but when a community's own institutions are empowered to act on their vision. Through the Unity in Action Program, the Foundation provides direct grants to community organizations already embedded in, and trusted by, the communities they serve.

Our partnership with Ozalla Youths in Diaspora (OYD) began with a shared vision: education, opportunity, and an Ozalla that offers its young people a real future. That vision led to a grant supporting OYD's annual summit, which brings together the resources, expertise, and commitment of Ozalla's diaspora community. More importantly, it opened an ongoing dialogue. This is the model we hope to replicate: not transactional giving, but partnerships that strengthen the institutions and relationships that endure long after any single grant is spent.

That relationship has run in both directions. In recognition of the Foundation's contributions to the community, Ozalla Youths in Diaspora presented the Foundation with a Community Development Award — an acknowledgment we value all the more because it comes from a partner who has built alongside us, and who understands the work from the inside.

The clearest example of that model came in April 2026, when PNFUSA partnered with the Ozalla Forum's 10th Anniversary Committee on an Education Empowerment project. Together, we equipped 40 classrooms across Ozalla with modern whiteboards, markers, and board cleaners — a combined investment of ₦834,000 that put functioning teaching materials into schools that had gone without. The Ozalla Forum organized the celebration, mobilized the community, and identified the need; PNFUSA brought resources and co-sponsored the educational component. The result was a gift not to the ceremony, but to the schoolchildren who will sit in those rooms long after the anniversary banners come down.

At that same celebration, the Ozalla Forum presented the Foundation with a Community Recognition Award — a formal acknowledgment from the community itself of the Foundation's contributions to Ozalla's growth, unity, and development. We accept that recognition with gratitude, and with the understanding that it is not an arrival. It is an encouragement to keep going.

President of Ozalla Development Union, Chief Obinze Patrick Okwuibe, joins to celebrate beneficiaries of PNF skills training.

In the coming year, the Foundation intends to grow the scholarship pool across both PNF and PNFUSA, reaching more students from the Nkanu communities; expand EmpowerHer to additional villages and grow Harvest of Hope's reach in lean seasons; formalize the skills training track with clearer selection criteria and an alumni network; and develop Unity in Action into an annual grant cycle that invites applications from community organizations across Ozalla. We are also investing in the PNF Scholarship Portal to streamline applications, track academic progress, and strengthen the connection between the Foundation and its scholars over time.

The 40 classrooms equipped this year will be used for years. The Aba candidates will finish their training. The apprentices will complete their contracts and open their own shops. We measure our progress not in moments, but in the lives that continue after our part is done.

This year's work was made possible by partners and donors who share the conviction that a community's measure is how it cares for its own. We thank our community partners — the Ozalla Youths Forum, the Ozalla Development Union, the Ozalla Forum, Ozalla Youths in Diaspora, and our partners in the Enugu State Government — for building alongside us. And we thank the donors in Nigeria and abroad whose generosity sustains every scholarship, every grant, and every plate of food this Foundation provides.

Most of all, we are grateful to the scholars, apprentices, women, and families who trust us with a part of their story. The work is yours as much as ours.

Every scholarship begins with a donor who chose to invest in a student they may never meet. A single contribution can fund a semester or a full year of study; a gift of ₦25,000 funds a cash grant to a woman building a livelihood; sponsoring a vocational candidate can cost as little as ₦100,000. A sustained commitment changes a life's direction.

Donations through PNFUSA are tax-deductible for U.S. donors. To give or partner with us, please visit our Donate page or reach us at pnf+donate@nwomeh.com. Prospective scholars should apply through the PNF Scholarship Portal.