By Amaka Abayomi
Imagine how it would feel to eat, sleep, do daily chore, work or study on a dump site. This is exactly how thousands of residents of Dustbin Estate have been living for years now.

shanties where residents live in Dustbin Estate

From the side of the streets, it looks like your normal Lagos community, but behind the houses on Odofin Akinsanya Street, Awodi Ora, Ajegunle, live residents of the Dustbin Estate in clusters of make-shift houses of wood and zinc which are built directly on top of refuse dumps.

But one lady who is passionate about changing the fate of these residents, especially the children, is 28- year-old Ms. Tolulope Sangosanya, founder of  LOTS Charity Foundation which operates a resource centre that offers literacy classes to the children in the estate.

According to this Mass Communication graduate of Olabisi Onabanjo University, her support programme has been well accepted because it complements what they learn in school.

“LOTS means Love On The Streets, but I started out as a giver in 2005, and the first event we had was on December 18, 2005 when I gathered all d money I had and together with my siblings, we went to visit an orphanage.

“In 2006, we fed 300 street children between Ikeja and Maryland. In 2007, we fed 1,000 children in Oko-Baba. In 2008, we fed 2,000 children in Dustbin Estate and Ibadan simultaneously.

It was at this point that I realized what I had to offer was more than just feeding because what started as a hobby began to expand.

“When I came here, I found out that most school children couldn’t read or write despite being in school. This prompted us to start the literacy class right on the refuse dump. To show how important education is to the average Nigerian, we had only 25 kids that registered, but when we organized parties or fun_days, we had over 1,000 kids in attendance.

So energetic and passionate is Tolu about giving children of Dustbin Estate a new lease of life that all that is needed for children to register is their parental consent and copies of past school results.

“They don’t pay anything to register but we need their parental consent, signature and they must be working as either a bus conductor, mechanic, petty trader or hawker, and passport photographs, photocopy of past school results so as to enable us track their academic development, age, sex, and the likes.

The LOTS Charity Foundation Resource Centre is housed in 13-bedroom flat and has 2 en_suite classrooms, a well-stocked library, a common room which boasts of 40″ flat screen and home theater donated by Sony shop in Shoprite, a computer room, kitchen, and a vocation room where useful entrepreneurial skills like photography, carpentry, fashion design and tie and dye will be taught.

“Funding has not been easy but I thank God that churches, individuals and corporate organisations are funding us. We were the recipients of the fund from the annual ‘Worship for Change Concert’, held by a parish of Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, which we used in paying for the rent here.

The library was donated by an American NGO, the computers and air conditioners were also donated by RCCG, Sony shop in Shoprite donated the home theater and 40″ flat screen, One Love Club raised N336,000 for us and some staff of DSTV are contributing to pay for a decoder and subscription for the centre.

Some of the kids at the literacy class

“What we do here is to train 7 star individuals that would make global impact. We take them out to meet other kids so they could learn from them. We take them to shopping malls, Chinese restaurants where they are taught how to use chop sticks and cutleries and they value such outings. We also provide them with meals three times a week, but we intend do make it daily.”

According to Tolu, the curriculum includes sex education, human rights studies handled by Ajegunle Community Project, etiquette is handled by Project Stretch, financial literacy is by Junior Achievement Nigeria, and personal is handled by us.

Despite the challenges faced to actualise her vision, Tolu says what keeps her going is the fact that she is achieving the paradigm shift, especially as the children now know that life should not be lived on the dump site.

“We have been able to place it in their sub-consciousness that there are different and better ways to live life and it is possible for anyone who is from a poor background to become something. Now is the best time to mould the future of Nigeria because they are still young and can be taught and improved upon.”