The Mass Literacy for Less Privileged and Almajiri Initiative (MALLPAI) Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), has called for adequate investment in the proper education of children so as to keep them away from crime.
The Wife of the Kebbi governor, Mrs Aisha Bagudu made the appeal in a chat with newsmen on Saturday night in Abuja.
Bagudu who is the founder and initiator of the foundation, spoke on side lines of a two-day Mallpai Foundation 2021 Literacy Day with the theme: “Promoting Literacy for better education in Nigeria.”
“My NGO has nothing to do with government. It has been in existence since 2009; We have our challenges and also our success stories in sending a lot of out-of-school children back-to-school.
“We started with Almajiri, we had challenges then and now, people do not just see such children, they just see a nuisance, but for us we see the child not the nuisance.
“We do not see through such children, we see them as human beings; some of them have started working, some have come back to work with Mallpai Foundation,
“I am a mother and majority of my children are girls, the mistake we all make is to think that by educating our children alone and not educating others, we are doing better, we are not,’’ she said.
According to her, these children that we are looking down on today will be the ones that will not let our children sleep in future, if we do not invest in providing them with basic education.
She maintained that even if only one child was impacted, it would be counted as success, saying that the foundation had empowered over 2,000 people with education and skills.
“One of the things we do is we will ask you to pick one child per house to educate, by picking that child you have changed that family.
“Such a child will grow up knowing the importance of helping another person, you have to understand the mindset of parents before you can effectively advise them, if need be.
Bagudu disclosed that the foundation solicits funds from different people for its programmes, while promising to improve on the success it had so far achieved.
