By Fortune Eromosele, Abuja

The leader Joe 1808 Foundation, has planned scholarships for about 5 students in the Government Day Secondary School, Madalla of Niger State.

Its Program Director, Mazi Richard Chiedu disclosed this to Vanguard during its “Back to School Campaign Project” to the Government Day Secondary School, Madalla, Niger State.

During their visit to the school, they distributed educational materials to students, planted over four trees in support of climate change, trained the students on leadership with pep talks lasting over two hours and distributed sanitary pads to female students.

Speaking to our correspondent shortly after the event, Chiedu said, “This is the first time that we are visiting this school, some of the plans that we have for the school is for starters, we plan to adopt five students in the school under our scholarship scheme. This is how we are going to start partnering with the school, to achieve further cooperation with the school management.

“But in other schools in the environment, we have about 50 students in our scholarship scheme across this area. I think this school is one of the few schools that have not benefitted from our scholarship scheme, that’s why we came here and included the school in our scholarship scheme.”

He called for the support of the government and international NGOs to foster rapid deployment of children back to school for national development.

He said, “Our message to the government is support and partnership, we’ve been doing this on our own, most times we fund these projects from contributions that members of the foundation give to us and this is what we have been doing for over five years. So, we haven’t really seen the support that we need from government.

“And not only government, we are also looking at international NGOs, to see how we can curb these issues, especially the issue of child education and out-of-school children. We at Leader Joe 1808 Foundation, intend to cut this and bridge the gap and we are looking at the government coming full scale in supporting us to achieve this.”

On her part, the Principal, Government Day Secondary School, Madalla, Janet Moses, extended her appreciation to the Leader Joe 1808 Foundation for their humanitarian work to the school.

“I bless the name of the Lord to be among the living to witness the visit of Leader Joe 1808 Foundation. And my prayer is that the blessing of the Lord follows them” she stated.