Meadow Hall Foundation seizes day, delivers first education convention

Committed to transforming society through education, Meadow Hall Foundation, an arm of the Meadow Hall Group, a mosaic of innovative education companies recently brought under one roof at the City Hall in Lagos, stakeholders in Nigeria’s education space to brainstorm and generate solutions to myriad challenges in the sector.

“We are pleased to welcome you to the maiden edition of our education convention, it is meant to be a forum where education practitioners, school owners and policy makers gather to share experiences and formulate actionable lines of actions in order to transform our society through education. This partly informed the theme of this year’s edition: “Transforming Society through Education.”

Speaking at the event, Oby Ezekwesili, former minister of education highlighted that the purpose of education is to develop cognitive, affective and motor skills, which help the individual become more creative, productive and competitive as they solve society’s needs.

“Education is the best economic policy in modern economies. The economies getting ahead today are those that have developed the character, capacity and competence of their citizens” Ezekwesili said.

Part of a grand strategy to make Nigerians more productive and competitive is to develop every sector of the economy and this would require that vocational skills are taken seriously to curb unemployment rates.

“You see, once anyone picks up a skill they can put food on the table. The Lagos state government is working out a strategy to ensure every student graduates with a skill. We intend to make this a private sector driven initiative because the truth is that government cannot afford to provide neither all the funds nor the managerial competence required to make such a critical project is successful” Obafela Bank-Olemoh, special adviser to the Lagos state governor on education said at the convention.

Some creative solutions to specific problems were presented at the convention. For instance, there are about four million out of school children in Lagos and the Lagos state government is working out strategies with the Bridge Academy, a low cost education service provider to help plug this gap.

Fela Durotoye, CEO at GEMSTONE spoke of Project Streetwise, which is designed to provide education for children from humble backgrounds who hawk items on the streets of Lagos by mobilising private sector funds to create informal schools. These informal schools would run for two hours a day; between 10am and 12pm.

“During these hours we would provide lessons in Mathematics, English Language and Business Leadership and at the end of each day’s class, we would give them a loaf of bread and a sachet of table water because ironically, this is what they work for daily” said Durotoye.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU