Foundation to Fete 2,500 disadvantaged children in Lagos communities

Committed to providing basic dietary and welfare needs to underprivileged children in Lagos, a non-profit organisation, Opening Hearts Foundation – an initiative of Kadine’s Soup Pot is set to impact on about to 2,500 kids across eight locations in the state this December.

The foundation has since 2018 through its outreach programmes celebrate children during festive periods – Christmas, Easter and in times of crisis.

Nigerian Cuisine chef and founder Opening Hearts foundation, MaryJane Ogugua-Verwey, “We are a platform where people voluntarily express their care for children in need. This is an activity we have been running from our home for the past 17 interventions. We started with 500 children on December 25th, 2018 and since then with my passion, ambition and mission we continued relentlessly even through the COVID days, just to ensure we can reach a child in these areas.”

This time around we feel we have come of age for our 18th intervention within the space of three years. But with that comes responsibility and expansion so we are aiming to reach 2500 Children with food, drinks and medical aid in eight locations within Lagos State.

She stressed, “I have a story to tell; I stand here today as a product of the goodwill and grace of many benevolent good people. I was a child once like these children that would look at the more privileged children on Christmas day or at Easter and pray for the day when I too could have like they did.”

At Opening Hearts Foundation, we feel the heartache of seeing children from impoverished backgrounds as they watch others from more privileged backgrounds enjoy seasons of joy with no recourse to them. For this reason, we have undertaken to create memories that these less privileged children can cherish for the rest of their lives.

Communities to benefit from the outreach include; Puposhola, Eliiot Iju-Shaga; Isholiki Street, New Oko-Oba; Station Bustop- Iju-Shaga Rd; Chief Orazulike Road – Pipline (Fagba); Yomi Are Street – New Oko-Oba; Banana Community, Ajegunle and Oko Agbon Community in Aboyi –Ketu.
Ogugua-Verwey added that the objective for the outreaches is the joy, inner peace, satisfaction, happiness and a changed life for the children that could go the wrong way from an envy that comes from deep within the pain of poverty. “Our long term vision is to keep intervening with the aid of individuals, small, medium and large scale enterprises as well as national and multinational companies from the industries that can assist. We must get to the point where we shift the paradigm from corporate social responsibility to corporate social sustainability.”