We will educate 100 out-of-school girls – AYEEI

You recently held a seminar, what were its objectives?  This year we are concentrating on girls’ education and women empowerment due to the situation girls have found themselves. If you look at UNESCO statistics you find that out of over 10 million out of school children over 5.5million are girls and when you look at […]

You recently held a seminar, what were its objectives? 

This year we are concentrating on girls’ education and women empowerment due to the situation girls have found themselves. If you look at UNESCO statistics you find that out of over 10 million out of school children over 5.5million are girls and when you look at the net enrolment rate for children at primary school level, you find out that it’s around 56% for girls and 61% for boys. The country stands to lose a lot in the untapped potentials of these young girls. So that was what necessitated us to organise this seminar, to create awareness and enlighten the public.

There have been so many campaigns for girl-child education, why do you think we are yet to see the effect?

That is why we tried hard to organise this summit in which we involved a lot of other NGOs that have the same goal and aim towards girl-child education and women empowerment. What makes this different is that we have an action plan on ground and we are determined to carry it through with or without government support, because we feel when you want to do something like this, you need to follow it through; you can’t just rely on government. 

Part of our action plan is to enroll girls into primary schools because many of those you see on the street have had access to education, and for those that have the primary education background at some point in life they can move forward. So we want to try and enroll at least 100 girls into schools from now to December. 

How do you hope to sustain your action plan?  

We have generated a report on how to sustain the action plan; we have a paper on ground on how to have a sustainable action plan, how to carry it through and ensure that the whole progress of each girl that is enrolled in school is overseen by someone, that is why we have state coordinators in the 19 northern states.

Can you give us an insight into the action plan?

Based on research, we have identified that there are six core states that suffer from this identified issue of poor girl-child education. These are Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Jigawa, Zamfara and Niger states. We want to include Borno State because the insurgency in the state has forced a lot of girls out of school in the state. We also want to give them the higher chunk of the scholarships. Also part of the action plan is that we are going to create a scholarship scheme under the NGO.

Government says there is free education for every child up to the age of 15 but that is merely on paper, because if you make that claim, it implies that the books, the uniforms and every other expenses should be provided. Based on our research, a lot of children can’t go to school not because they can’t attend classes, but because they don’t have uniforms or book or because they don’t have money to buy brooms.

Part of our research is meant to provide school uniforms per child at the cost at least N700 and so if you want to give three school uniforms to a child in a whole year, that will cost N2,100.

How do you hope to sustain the project?

We have state coordinators, we also have local government representatives that will identify families that need this interventions. Whatever names they bring we will do a background check to confirm that these girls are eligible for the scholarships and thereafter we will start the registration process before we send them to schools. Every year they get their three uniforms and the number of books required. At the end of their primary school education, we will pay for their common entrance exams. We hope to enroll more girls thereafter.