Foundation moves to promote girl-child education in five northern states

According to the founder, Adetoun Akitoye, #HerDream initiative is to equip girls and prepare them to return to school.She said, “It is very disheartening that in our highly civilized world of today, we have about 262 million individuals still uneducated. This means that one in five children, adolescent or youths are out of school in the world. In Nigeria, 13.2 million children are out of school. This number rose from 10.5 million in 2010, making Nigeria the country with the highest number of the world’s out-of-school children. What is most alarming is that out of that humungous number, girls share over 60 per cent. Education is essential to every individual- boy or girl. Surprisingly, many communities still strongly discriminate against girl-child education, not giving girls the support they require to go to school.

“#HerDream is a Project launched by Mademoiselle Foundation to create awareness for more to be done to promote girl-child education in Nigeria, particularly in the north, equipping them to return to school. Our goal is to equip at least 10,000 girls with educational support materials by 2025 and reach six million other girls, through enlightenment programmes.

According to Akitoye, educating more girls opens up new and auspicious cascades for the future; not just for the girls themselves, but also for the society at large.

“When we educate a girl-child, we educate a whole nation because educated girls will bring forth educated generations. When more girls go to school, mortality rate highly falls, more healthy children are raised through planned delivery, and there is decrease in overall sexual violence.

Already, Akitoye said the foundation has a robust outline of programmes to promote girl-child education, adding that the unveiling of the project will be succeeded by a book launch on the state of girl-child education in Nigeria and a national essay competition on “My dream, my education”.

“As we unveil the #HerDream project selected companies will receive honorary recognition certificates for their contribution to education in Nigeria, especially girl-child education. These companies are being recognised for their direct and indirect social investment in girl-child education through their products, services and innovation, “she added.