By Ebunoluwa Sessou

Umesh Amarnani is the Managing Director, of Pacegate Limited. He leads Pacegate utilizing his fifteen years of senior management experience in global hospitality, manufacturing, and trading companies. Umesh holds a BSC Management degree from Kings College London.

As a talented business development expert and honest negotiator ensuring our client’s needs are always put first, he takes pleasure in ensuring that the challenges of out-of-school in Nigeria become a thing of the past.

In this interview with WO, he speaks on why his organization is poised in addressing issues of out-of-school using the pan-Nigerian approach.

According to him, Out- of- school has caused global climate change and its challenge if not addressed could degenerate to a more complicated scenario that cannot be handled.

To him, educated girls bring out higher wages and greater upward mobility, contributing to economic growth. Hence, the rates of maternal mortality drop and they are less likely to marry as children and against their will.

Considering the population of Nigeria, how do you arrive at the choice of schools to benefit from your donations? Are there any criteria for picking a school or state to assist?

We used the stakeholders’ interests and the communities we operate in as the criteria for picking the public schools. We started with six schools in our locality at Ilupeju, Lagos State, Nigeria. We support schools in oilfield communities in the rural areas where PEARL operates. The partners support schools based on the interest of the respective companies and the areas they wanted to cover.

In general, we have a PAN Nigerian approach where we work with the Ministry of Education and Educational District of each state for approval, planning and implementation.

How many schools has your organisation been able to visit with your sponsorship, and how many girl-children have you been able to transform their destinies through this initiative?

Evolve has been able to support 32 schools across 9 states in Nigeria. About 10,000 girl children have benefited from these school supplies over a period of three years.

In an ecosystem inhabited by males and females, do you not think that leaving the boy- child behind would constitute a major problem to society and even the educated girl child in the long run?

Our inspiration has come from project drawdown where top scientists came up with two studies which were ranked 6th (educating women) 7th (Family Planning) out of 100 in making an impact on reducing the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.

Our focus as an NGO is to support the education of the girl child by providing them with school supplies (such as school uniforms, sandals, pens, notebooks; school bags) that they basically need to be educated and teaching them to practice heartfulness relaxation to allow them to connect and center themselves.

We also recognize the importance of educating boys. On a case basis, we look at each school and at times, include 10-20percent of boys in mixed schools. Our focus remains on the girl child for the reasons earlier mentioned.

Do you have any plan to include the boy-child in your sponsorship any time soon?

Currently, we have some schools where we include about 10-20% of the boys that really need these items as advised by school principals.

What is the financial implication of this exercise? And do you have any governmental support for this noble project?

The Investment per school is averagely two million five hundred thousand naira. The ministry of Education has been very supportive for approvals in executing this project.

Recently, Evolve held a media brief where the organisation restated its commitment to tackling global climate change by educating the girl-child. How did you come about Evolve and when did this kick off?

Evolve is ADIPRO’s arm of giving back. The Vision of ADIPRO is to create environments that permits the shift in collective consciousness of businesses and the communities in which they operate, to one that is sustainable & responsible in the long run.

This means that every market that ADIPRO generates income from, we give back to the communities in those markets. In Nigeria, ADIPRO has been giving back in collaboration with its distributors, Pacegate Limited and PEARL through Evolve Charity Trust which is a registered NGO. Evolve started with 6 schools around Ilupeju, Lagos State supporting about 1000 girls in 2020.

By stating that your organisation is poised to tackle global climate change by educating the girl-child, one tends to believe there is a correlation between not educating a girl-child and the surging global climate change. Can you explain?

Yes, it is true that there is a link between educating girls and climate change. To properly explain the concepts first, let’s look at climate change.

According to the United Nations, Climate Change is a real problem which is being felt with water availability, making it scarcer in more regions. Global warming exacerbates water shortages in already water-stressed regions and is leading to an increased risk of agricultural droughts affecting crops, and ecological droughts increasing vulnerability of ecosystems.

Secondly, Project Drawdown is the world’s leading resource for Climate Solutions. The mission of Project Drawdown is to help the world reach ‘drawdown’ which is the point in the future when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline, thereby halting catastrophic climate change as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible.

Evolve’s Schools Connect program is a Heartfulness Institute concept. The drive for Girl child Education was inspired by Project Drawdown (www.drawdown.org) where top scientists came together and researched projects to help curb global warming. The study of Project Drawdown articulates 100 ways to reduce the effect of global warming of which the sixth and seventh most impactful interventions are Educating Girls and Family Planning.

Educated girls realise higher wages and greater upward mobility, contributing to economic growth. Their rates of maternal mortality drop and they are less likely to marry as children and against their will.

Also, securing women’s right to voluntary, high-quality family planning around the world would have powerful positive impacts on the health, welfare, and life expectancy of both women and their children. It also can affect greenhouse gas emissions.

Therefore, fewer children would result in lesser emissions of harmful gases that damage the climate. It also means that the limited resources will be enough for a declining population.

In your brief you stated that Evolve targets to restore 50,000 female students across Nigeria back to school. What exactly is the philosophy of the organisation?

Our philosophy as described in our vision is to give back to the communities in which we operate. We have the S-connect, C-connect and U-connect programs.

The S-connect is the School connect program that involves giving back school supplies to secondary school girls and the INSPIRE program for educating the teachers on Value-based Education.

The C-connect is the Corporate connect program which is in partnership with the Adizes Institute offering training programs to the corporate we work with.

The U-Connect is the University connect program which will kick off this year, focusing on improving the soft skills of university students.

According to a UNESCO report in 2022, about 10 million Nigerian children are out -of- school and of that number 60 percent are girls. How do you intend to accomplish such a massive project of getting the Nigerian girl-child back to school?

It starts with a conscious thought of making a difference and contributing to society. We hope that with our work, we inspire other corporations to do the same. We also accept contributions from individuals. Together, we can all make a difference.

According to your report, Evolve launched the Inspire Programme to impact teachers on 21st-century value-based education. How do you intend to go about it?

Inspire is a value-based education enrichment programme assisting educators to develop a heart-centred approach to teaching. This will enable trainers to take a holistic approach towards student growth using 21st-century styles of learning such as the heartfulness Way. The aim of this programme is to create a loving and compassionate learning environment through the heart-based approach. The ongoing training facilitated by international professionals across the world, covers facilitation skills, inspired learning, heterogeneous learners, heart-centred education, curriculum practical workshop and communication skills.

The inspire programme being implemented in Nigeria was launched in 2021 with training of 18 teachers from 6 schools within Ilupeju in Lagos State, Nigeria. We plan to continue in subsequent years so that more teachers can benefit in impacting the lives of more children.

Being a non-profit organisation, how has Evolve been able to meet the funding obligation needed to meet its target?

We have been funded largely through self-contributions from our ADIPRO, Pacegate Limited and PEARL and supported by our lead partner, Polaris Bank as well as our supporting partners like OVH Energy Marketing now NNPC Retail, BIC pens, Crownstar books and Hill + Knowlton Strategies. Over the last 3 years, we have been able to support over 10,000 secondary school girls in 32 schools. We are soliciting for the support of more organisations to help drive this vision to support 50,000 girl children in five years