By Onimisi Alao, Yola
Over 900 out-of-school girls who returned to school in Adamawa State on the prompting of a pro-girlchild organisation are benefitting from a further intervention to keep them in school.
Over 600 of the girls in two focal local government areas of the state have received books, pens and pencils as well as school bags and sandals, with 300 awaiting their turn in a third LGA to be reached next week.
Africa Centre for Leadership Strategy and Development (Centre LSD) which is executing the intervention project with support from Malala Fund, said while handing out the school materials to benefitting female students in Numan at the weekend, that the current distribution programme which first took place in Song earlier in the week, will be extended to Maiha LGA next week.
Executive Director of the Centre LSD, Mr Monday Osasah, said 317 girls got the school materials in Song and that 318 were in Numan for the distribution exercise there, and that more than 300 other school girls would also benefit in Maiha when their turn comes next week.
“We are distributing these materials to girls that we encouraged to go back to school,” Mr Osasah said, explaining, “We facilitated their return to school. What we need next is to encourage them to remain in school by giving them books, pen and pencils, sandals and school bags.”
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He said his organisation had identified the beneficiaries to be among out-of-school children and had got them back in school by first creating Safe Spaces at which they interacted with in-school girls.
“If you are not in school but are interacting with people in school, you will be motivated to go to school,” he explained, adding that in all, his organisation got about 1,500 girls in the three focal LGAs to get back in school.
He said even in Numan LGA where girls generally embrace Western education, his organisation still identified and got 350 out-of-school girls to go to school.
“We are going around the three Senatorial zones via the three focal LGAs (Song for Central, Numan for Southern Zone and Maiha for the Northern Zone) to encourage young women to go to school and not get married too soon and lose the opportunity to develop their potentials,” the Centre LSD executive director said.
He disclosed that Maiha has the worst incidence of out-of-school girls while the case of Song is also bad, but that “even in Numan, where you may be inclined to think that everyone goes to school, a lot of children don’t go to school.”
He concluded that his organisation’s project is meant to increase girlchild enrolment, retention and completion of secondary schools.
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