OLUSEYI BISIRIYU FOUNDATION’S UNUSUAL SCHOOL FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN

Not less than 400 children benefited from Oluseyi Bisiriyu Foundation’s Unusual School program.

The program serves as an alternative learning avenue to keep children on educational track since the pandemic prevented them from formal schooling.

The government ordered the closure of school to prevent the spread of this deadly virus due to its high communicable access into all socioeconomic sectors of the world. The closure carry high social and economic costs for people across different communities, and its impact however is particularly severe for the most vulnerable and marginalized children and their families.

The resulting disruptions exacerbated already existing disparities within the educational system in Nigeria, where 70% of parents cannot afford the cost of a virtual education for their wards, amongst other aspects of their lives.

In order to reduce the effect this disruption in learning for the new school year, the Foundation sought partnership with the Unusual School team from Lagos State, to bring an unusual learning to the children of Ogun State. The idea is to close the learning gap by reviving the spark of learning in the children, which has been dormant for the past few months.

UNUSUAL SCHOOL is an initiative aimed at bridging the learning gap by providing learning tools that are usually available to privileged children, now available to the underprivileged children of our society. The learning gap is rapidly turning to a gulf and in this unusual time of a global pandemic, the reality can no longer be ignored.

The purpose of the program is to take teaching and learning to the streets, reaching the unreached, teaching the underprivileged and giving live to the hopeless by choosing a strategic location easily accessible to underprivileged children and wait for the curiosity of both parents and children to compel them to inquire about the program and commence to participate with excitement.

The program also focus on taking quality education to the hinterlands which affords the children access to 21st century teaching and learning methods.

The uniqueness of the program and the learning method is in the fact that these children are given weekly take-home learning packs designed in compliance with the National Curriculum.

The response was overwhelmingly positive as evidenced by the below pictures, which proves that the children are hungry, yearning, and ready to learn.

Some of the parents who came with their children commended the Foundation for an amazing initiative, and they appealed for the continuity of a generational changing program such as this.