Seyi Bolaji: Educate a child - Overcoming battles & championing quality education

My parents kept trying to have a boy but ended up with seven girls. I am the last of the pack of seven (now six). I am fond of saying I come from a “girl’s hostel”. Back then, people would meet my parents and feel they don't have children because they have only girls. Growing up this way comes with its battles. I’ve fought many battles in my life. I don’t mean going to war with anyone, but internal battles. Growing up, I felt I had to prove a point that I was also a child, whether I was a boy or not. Imagine what this does to a child’s self-esteem. I knew there was a lot I could achieve and I was going to do it no matter what society thinks. I’ve always wanted to live for social impact. Having my own share of societal “battles”, I couldn’t see how to impact society. Everything changed when our house got burnt.

For a greater part of my life, issues around social justice have been my focus. This has led me to working on projects that relate to quality education for children. Doing this has helped us reach out to young people in marginalized communities. Particularly, helping to ensure young girls in these communities get their basic needs. I am passionate about seeing any child around me empowered. Regardless of their situation or background, I want them empowered to fulfill their potential. Having to get through life’s constant battles has brought me to this point. 

I grew up feeling like I was not enough. I thought I couldn't do certain things because I was not a boy, and boys do them better. I had many insecurities - from the color of my skin to having a gap tooth. These are things I now cherish about myself and consider beautiful. These days I look at myself and I’m like “God, I am such a beautiful girl”. Then, it was a battle that affected my self-esteem.

In 2011, the post election violence in Northern Nigeria affected my family.  Our house was burnt down and we came out with nothing. Our lives, the only surviving property from that occurrence. We had to immediately move into the barracks for shelter and safety. Kaduna state was one of the hubs of this violence and we lived in Zaria, Kaduna state. What we knew as home was gone.

We were lucky that my parents had begun building a particular house before that time. It was in a semi-urban area and was not completed. We had to move there as soon as we could. In this community, we became the champions of the community. We were part of the few people who spoke English. The children attended a primary school in the neighborhood. They would always come around my house because I love to play with children. I’d help them out with assignments and school work. Soon the number grew from one or two kids to ten or eleven at a time. I started holding evening lessons for them in front of the house. It was a fun thing for me to do but was also helping to build my esteem. I grew up shy because I never felt enough, but with these children I didn’t have to be anything else other than myself. 

Beyond the evening lessons, I became interested in the future of the children. From our interactions, I saw how many of them were not receiving quality education. It got me thinking. How would quality education impact their lives? What are the teachers teaching them in school? How qualified are these teachers? Do they have adequate educational materials in school? I had all these questions. So yes, the house got burnt but an opportunity to meet and impact the children came from this challenge.

Whenever I am around children, I want them to feel happy and excited. I went for supervision at an IDP Camp. We are running safe spaces for girls and having them learn literacy. The girls are of different age groups, 10 to 12, 12 to 14 and so on. We got in and on seeing me they got happy and excited. Then my colleague turned to me and was like “Oh Seyi, these children like you” and I reply “I like them too”. I get so much joy from seeing them happy. This drives me to want quality education for the children. I know it will help them maximize their potential because it helped me. 

I don’t mind spending my last money on paying children’s school fees, even with my salary. I do not mind doing all that because I want children to be able to get a quality education. 

Going to a smaller school brought an academic turn to my life. Reading wasn’t my thing earlier on in school but I always remember what we learn in class. I wasn’t the smartest in class but I wasn’t bottom either. You’d hardly find me reading a book but you couldn’t say I wasn’t serious because my results were good.  I remember a boy in my class when we were entering primary four. He walked around like he deserved to be first in class, and he was rude about it. Because I was always made to feel I wasn’t a boy, I wanted to do better than him. So I read for the exams this time around and I got first position. He felt he was better than the girls in the class so I put in extra work to prove him wrong. Oh it felt good.

From primary 4, I moved to secondary school. Everyone felt I could do it but I saw the gaps in making that decision. I struggled with topics I should have learnt in the final years of primary school. I regressed in my grades in junior secondary school. For my senior secondary school, I changed schools and felt I needed to do better this time. I didn’t have friends in this new school so I put all my focus on reading my books. Soon, I was topping the class. I became a straight A student . Mathematics wasn’t my thing but I had the rest of the subjects figured out. I have very intelligent sisters and that pressure helped me. You cannot fail in this house because everyone comes with a gift and you want to come empty handed? They’ll break your head. 

Zaria remains a special place for me. It’s a place you feel safe unless of course there is a crisis. I’m from Osun state, but nobody knows me there. My parents have been in Zaria since they married. I had all my education in Zaria and even worked with the state government for a while so Zaria is home for me. 

 We could no longer afford the fees for the secondary school I was attending. I had to change schools to someplace cheaper. It was a difficult transition for me going from a “big” school to a much smaller and cheaper school. I had to see reasons with my parents because they couldn’t afford it. One of the days, my mum  woke me up in the middle of the night after my initial resistance to explain things to me. First week of resumption, I met two classmates from my previous school here also. They were not my friends, but we were classmates. They met me and said to me “look at you, you are now poor. Your parents don’t have money again…blah, blah, blah.” I cried home from school that day and didn’t stop crying until later at night. My eyes still get teary thinking about it.

Our outreaches champion quality education. For me, It sometimes feels like I am trying to curate the life I didn’t have but wanted as a kid. Whenever I go to a school for outreach, there’s always a girl I see myself in. She speaks like me or looks like me in a way and I say this  a mini-Seyi. I end up impacting all the children but go to more length for that one I see myself in.

I got into the university at 16 and I was going to school from home. My parents didn't want me living alone in school. That didn't work out so well. I was falling sick because of the stress of early lectures and coming home late at night. I had to cope with it for a while. Everyone wanted me to change from English to Law after the first year.  They saw a lawyer in me but I guess I didn't see it.

I meet my children at night when I get back from school and on the weekends. I try to create time for them still. My house gets filled with the children and I get to discuss with them. 

On campus, I was very quiet. When my course mates listen to me now, they tease me saying “Seyi, so you pretended in school”. The only time I spoke in school was when I read through scripts. Even my lecturers knew me through my Matriculation number alone. I was top five in my class but nobody knew until our first result was out.  I didn’t have a social life in school, and when I speak to young people I always tell them to find a balance. I remember once raising my hand up to volunteer for class debate and saw the shock on people's faces.  But It was different outside of class. A friend of mine would always say to me, be kind but you don’t always have to be nice. I was a very nice person in school in that I was extending myself so much to do a lot of things. I would take any offer to volunteer or serve in any capacity I could.  With all this activity, I still found time for my kids at home.

After graduation in 2017, I started teaching. I taught for a few months teaching three subjects at the same time. This is why I always talk about quality education. Having a teacher deliver on these three subjects is a lot. Yet I wanted to ensure the children got the best out of all three subjects.  The stress from doing this doesn’t compare to the stress of when I taught in a creche. I took a painkiller every day during that period. One time in class, information got to me that a parent wanted to see the English teacher. Her child’s name was Isaac and on meeting her, she says she came to say thank you. I held a confused expression. She says "Isaac has become a better person at home. He would always talk about a particular English teacher he had in school. She wanted to come see me and show her gratitude for whatever it is I was doing. I had more parents and students send handwritten notes. They saw their wards get better in their academics and character wise. It was comforting for me to hear all these.

It felt good, but I started to think. "I could reach more children with the lessons I was impacting the children in my class with". I thought about building structures for quality education. Particularly I thought about children in marginalized communities. I said to myself "but there’s a lot to do for them."

My initiative started as a birthday outreach, it kicked off on the 4th of March, 2020. I wanted to spend my birthday with kids. Go to schools, give them educational materials, pay the fees for those who found it hard to pay their fees.

I shared the vision with people around me. Some people had been saying to me “Seyi, you need to start something” and I was like “Okay, I want to start something now.” A year before Project Educate a Child started, I started a virtual teens group. I named it “Creative Teens Corner”. It was a platform for children and teenagers. Those interested in creative writing, public speaking and personal development. Today, I have over 400 teenagers that I relate with almost everyday on the WhatsApp platform. ProjectEAC came the following year in 2020. I needed to put a structure to it so it can reach out to more children. A structure would take it from a one-time birthday experience to something sustainable. 

The question bugged my mind, if we reach out to these children today, what next? What is in it for them? So we created the structure and we now have the outreach several times a year. We’ve established reading clubs for all the schools that we have been to. I saw the power of reading in my life, in the life of my pupils in the classes I taught. We donate books to the reading clubs to help the children read more. Before going for our outreaches, we do some assessments. This helps us to know what the children we are going to meet need. Imagine having a child use one notebook for five subjects. A child going to school without a sandal or school bag. Learning in these conditions is frustrating. So beyond sorting their fees, we focus on ensuring the children are comfortable. Comfortable enough to learn well. 

There is a lot of focus on out-of-school children in Nigeria. But we forget there are a lot of children who are in school but are not learning. Some of the children “in-school” can’t read or write so what’s the effect of schooling them? The focus should be enhancing the quality of education for those in-school. Ensuring they are able to read, and write while not neglecting those out-of-school. In the university, I had course mates in the university who could not speak English. We were all studying English Language as our course. I mean they can’t put correct basic sentences together. It was sad seeing this reality.  This is another reason I emphasize the importance of quality of primary and secondary education.

We not only reach out to the kids but we go a step further to follow-up and track their progress in school. The sheer joy of having educational materials has helped build their self-esteem. Not having textbooks in class for example attracts a type of treatment. This could be from teachers and fellow pupils who have these textbooks. Why do they have to feel bad because their parents cannot afford textbooks? Our initiative has helped children in this aspect. They have access to textbooks we provide and they feel part of the class.

In the last outreach we went on in June, one of the team members noticed a notebook with one of the girls in the class. It turns out it was one of the notebooks we gave out at a previous outreach in March. She was at another school where we had visited before and she brought the notebook to this new school. It was a fulfilling moment for us. I checked the note and saw she wrote somewhere in the notes "Project EAC gave me this note". We engaged her to find out why she changed schools. We realized her parents couldn’t afford the fees from the previous school. We decided to take care of her fees and asked if she wanted to remain at the new school or go back to the old school. So she decided she was fine with the new school and we took up paying her fees. We also gave her more books seeing that she has been using the ones we gave her before.

After every outreach at the schools we go to, I always ask the children to make us a promise. A promise to commit to using the books, not allowing them to tear and also reading. It’s funny sometimes when we do it and we all laugh about it but most of them keep to the promise. The major thing for us is that we are keeping the children in school and that’s major. We want to ensure they remain in school and also access quality education. We have had parents reach out to us that their child now has interest in reading . Also, we get reports that the kids are doing well in their academics. We have our phone numbers on the educational materials and we have parents call to say thank you to us. 

Our first outreach had a theme: one child, one book. Funding was from family and friends at the onset and also my personal money. In March 2020 when we started, I worked in a radio station and my salary for February went into the March outreach.  The major source of funding for project EAC is personal. Even though we try to fundraise on social media. We put out stories of the impact we are making on social media. Friends and friends of friends try to donate to the initiative. 

At the beginning of the year, we had a target to reach 5,000 children between March and June. We are still on that goal because we have not been able to reach the number. I told my team members “we have said 5,000 and we will do it”. Even if it takes us from now till the end of the year, we will get to 5,000. We are at 3,000 children with 2,000 more to go.

My work is my life, I still do not have much of a social life. I do a lot of creative writing. When I am not going for outreaches, I am writing stories or thinking about stories. I wish to spend more time with people outside of work.  An example is my Instagram. My personal Instagram feels like an organization’s page. You would hardly find a picture of me having fun or enjoying myself because all my posts are about work. Not even a picture like Seyi went for a wedding or something, it's all work.

We are meeting the vision and mission of Project Educate a Child. Ensuring that children are able to stay in school and that they also have quality education. We want them to also be able to build their life, talent and skills. That is what is important to us, important to me.