IT’S OUR NATIONAL CHILDREN’S DAY Don’t Let Us Forget to #BringBackOurGirls and make all schools #SafeSchools.

As Nigeria marks her national children’s day on 27th May 2014, Nigerian Global Youth Ambassadors – A World at School are reminding the President of Nigeria of his promise to bring back the abducted girls of Chibok and not relent on his promise of making all Schools in Nigeria Safe.

 When world Leaders adopted Millennium Development Goal (MDG 2), they made a commitment that by 2015 every child will be able to complete primary school. Over 10.5 million children in Nigeria can neither read nor write. At the current rate of progress in the educational and literacy growth of our Nation, it will be 2086 before the last girl will be expected to complete primary school. This is unacceptable. We must achieve Universal Primary Education. To do so, we must eliminate the barriers that keep millions of Nigerian Children out of school.

Some of these Barriers as listed by the United Nations Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative are:    

1.  Unaffordable cost of education    
2.  Shortage of classrooms   
3.   Humanitarian emergencies especially conflict 
4.  Gender discrimination 
5.  Child labour
6.  Shortage of qualified teachers
7.  Lack of learning materials 
8. Weak foundation for early learnin 
9.  Challenging family environments
10.  Mismatch of skills and Today’s livelihoods 
11.   Language barriers 
12.   Hunger and poor nutrition 
13.  Ineffective systems to evaluate the performance of students 
14.  Legacy of the current education system
15.  Outmoded curricula and learning materials 
16.   Lack of teacher capacity 
17.   Inadequate focus on values 
18. Lack of leadership on Global Citizenship

These are some of the barriers that need to be tackled for an effective Millennium Development Goal to be achieved.

A World at School has partnered with leading campaigners, Global decision makers, NGOs, Policy experts, Youth Leaders, and the faith and business communities in a Global 500 day countdown campaign to get every child into school and learning by the end of 2015.

 We believe it is still possible to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG2) at its set deadline of 2015 only if WE decide to support “A World at School” in attaining this enormous task.

Therefore lets all support A World at School today in creating the Nigeria we want.

Sincerely,

A World at School’s Nigerian Global Youth Ambassadors;

Esther Eshiet, Jackson Akor, Nina Mbah, Ojonwa Miachi, Philip Obaji Jr., Adebukola Orenuga, Ojedeji Samuel, Ichide Charles, Ayodeji Morakinyo, Chinemerem – Amara Egbuchulam, Temidayo Musa, Kenechukwu Oraelosi, Oluwaseyi Akindutire, Aina Abdularahmon, Douglas Imaralu, Emilia Asim – Ita, Dayo Akindolani, Purpose Osamwonyi, Daniel Stephen, Iserhienrhien Onibode, Kofoworola Jennifer and Damola Morenikeji.