By Ayoni M. Agbabiaka
Ahead of this year’s Children’s Day Celebration, a non-government organisation (NGO) based in Abuja, Sure Smiles Women and Children Advocacy Initiative (SSWCAI), has perfected plans to assist children in public schools to attain their academic goal.
To this vein, SSWCAI said school bags and books will be distributed as part of the foundation’s “One Child, One Bag Project.”
The group said pupils from the different public schools in Bwari area council had been selected to benefit from the programme.
Sure Smiles Women and Children Advocacy Initiative (SSWCAI) Coordinator, Mrs. Chioma Uzo-udegbunam, who said this during a courtesy visit to the Bwari area council chairman, Hon. Peter Ushafa, added that the project was aimed at motivating school children in their academic career.
She emphasised that the move to assist school pupils in public schools was one of the mission statements of the NGO, adding that the core focus of the foundation was to put smiles on the faces of less privileged women and children in the society.
She said: “We want to embark on this project as part of our mission statement to put smiles on the faces of women and children in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“Come May 28, we will distribute over 1, 000 bags and instructional materials to pupils in public schools across the 85 public schools in Bwari area council.
“We equally choose this period because we discover that during rainy season like this, some of the pupils struggle to protect their books with cellophane bags. “Some even battle to use their school uniform to protect their books from being destroyed by rain. We felt, this is not good enough. So, we decided to initiates this ‘One bag, One child project’ as our token contribution towards the welfare of these children.”
The coordinator affirmed that Bwari area council had been chosen as a pilot scheme for the project with a promise to take the project to other area councils in FCT in the subsequent years “so that they can also benefit from the scheme.”
In his remarks, Bwari area council chairman commended the group for the initiative, saying that for the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the issue of education should not be left in the hands of government alone.
