Rotary Club of Kaduna, in partnership with various organisations, has renovated 120 chairs and donated learning materials to Demonstration Primary School, Kakuri Hausa, as part of its ongoing efforts to improve basic education and literacy in the state.
The President of the Rotary Club, Mrs. Portia Stephanie Aji, led the initiative, emphasising the club’s commitment to addressing the immediate needs of the school.
She noted that her involvement with the school began when she took over as president and learned about the poor conditions, including students sitting on bare floors.
“I visited the school and saw children sitting on the floor without any hope of a conducive learning environment. Today, we have donated 120 renovated chairs along with notebooks, dictionaries, chalks, and other learning materials,” Aji said during the handover ceremony.
The project, which was carried out in collaboration with the Kaduna Indian Association, Natural Nigeria, ValueChain, and Nigerian Breweries, is part of Rotary’s annual focus on basic education and literacy.
The head teacher of the school, Ayiya Rebecca Solomon, expressed gratitude for the support, highlighting the five-year partnership with Rotary Club.
“They have been supporting the school for five years, starting last year with a water and hygiene project. Today, they returned with renovations, books, chalk, and writing materials. However, our pressing need now is securing the school environment by providing security wire for the perimeter fence to prevent theft,” she said.
Despite the improvements, Solomon noted that the school’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, (WASH) facility lacks a power source, making it difficult to maintain basic hygiene standards.
In her remarks, Zahratu Suleiman, a representative of the Kaduna State government on basic education, praised the Rotary Club for its intervention, noting that the government cannot handle the challenges of education alone. “This initiative is a success for us. We look forward to more partnerships like this to enhance education in the state,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Aji also highlighted another significant project close to her heart—the donation of a mammogram machine to Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) in Zaria.
She stressed the importance of the machine in early breast cancer detection, lamenting the lack of such equipment in most hospitals in Kaduna.
“Breast cancer is on the rise in the state, and many people cannot afford to travel to Lagos for mammograms. This results in many resorting to traditional medicine, often leading to advanced stages of cancer,” she explained.