Meet Anja Ringgren Lovén – Inspiration for Many Youth

Anja Ringgren Lovén is the founder of the charity organisation DINNødhjælp which has been doing protection and rescue operations of children accused of being witches in Nigeria since 2012. She became famous in 2016 when a photo from one of her rescue actions of which children went viral. In the picture, she squats in front of a small naked and starved boy whom she gives water with her water bottle. She subsequently took the boy to the children’s centre in Nigeria where he miraculously survived. He was named Hope by her and this operation became a major catalyst in her struggle to tell the rest of the world about which children and the superstition that prevailed in Nigeria.

She was born in 1978 in Frederikshavn Denmark. She works and lives in Denmark and Nigeria where she manages  DINNet relief and heads land of hopes. She has been giving lectures since 2014 on what it means to sell everything you own to pursue your dream. In the lectures, she also talks about other things such as life at the Land of Hope children’s centre and how to bring about the superstition in Nigeria. She is today Denmark’s most booked speaker.

In January 2016, she was one a rescue mission in Nigeria, where she came across a case where she met a 2-year-old boy who was disgraced by his own parents after being convinced that he is a witch and that boy was wandering alone on the streets of Nigeria. An image of her making this child comfortable and offering him food and water went viral in International media that raised necessary questions about these kinds of rescues. After rescuing that boy and getting him into the orphanage that she runs with her husband David. She named the boy Hope that is a tattoo on her knuckles that means ‘help one person every day’.

She was also named 2016’s Most Inspiring Person of the Year by German publication Ooom, with her fellow top-five company being the likes of former US President Barack Obama, Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron, His Holiness Pope Francis, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.