…..Reducing the number of out-school children
The Okachi Charity Foundation, owned by Nigerian Reality TV star Faith Morey has crossed boundaries to impact Nigeria’s public education sector, raising hope for low-income families’ children and bringing out-of-school children back to class.
According to the United Nations of Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 2024 figure, Out-of-School Children in Nigeria rose to 20 million.
With the help of the Okachi Charity Foundation, children from most underserved communities across the state have found their way back to the classroom and equipped with learning facilities.
Morey in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay disclosed that the foundation launched in honour of her late grandmother who served in the public school space for over 30 years aims to create a positive long-term impact in the public school system and to empower future generations by providing basic education needs.
“Our goal is to make sure we provide the roof, good learning environment, renovations and others within the school environment. This is just to make sure that our kids have brighter future,” she said.
Within six months of its launch, the foundation has adopted six schools in four states, ensuring adequate learning environments and equipping them with quality teachers.
“We have adopted six schools in four different states Lagos, PortHarcourt, Abuja and Kano and the one that stands out to me is our volunteer teacher’s initiative. We go into school and aside from renovation, we improve learning outcomes by providing paid teachers to schools.
“So I feel like after providing the roof and uniforms to encourage the kids to come to school, we are making sure these kids have quality teachers. Again you can provide everything you want but if there are no quality teachers that can actually teach them how to be better, introduce to them new technology, new curriculum in their scheme of work then everything we are doing won’t work considering the theme which is long term impact.”
She also explained that a lot of interventions have been made in the area of providing IT facilities to the schools to enable the children to fit into the future of technology.
In her words, growing up in a low-income environment also motivated her enough to do more knowing how a poor background can affect a child’s growth and education.
“We are not restricting ourselves through where we are from. It is an opportunity to ensure that quality education and better life is being given to every kid in disadvantaged and low income areas.”
Speaking on the success and impacts of the foundation so far, the reality TV star shared a success story of one of the kids under the Okachi Charity Volunteer Teacher programme doing overall best in an academic competition, signifying the progress and result of her work.
According to her, this shows that more children on the street are willing to learn but are being deprived of quality education because of low financial capacity.
However, Morey explained that there has been a series of community engagement and support from the schools to ensure the success of the foundation.
She added that education remains the bedrock of a successful nation, urging all relevant stakeholders to collaborate to ensure children get quality education at all levels.
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