Kick starts RecyclesPay In A Low Income School In Lagos, Nigeria
By Victor Gotevbe,
There are over 7 billion people in the world and the production of waste is daily. A staggering half of the waste are not collected,treated or safely disposed of. It is triggering a global waste crisis. Waste management, therefore, has to be addressed as a priority otherwise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be met. African Clean Up Initiative (ACI), an environmental Non Governmental Organization based in Lagos, Nigeria ,as part of its efforts to substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse (SDG 12), on Saturday, December 8, 2018 launched the ‘RecyclesPay,’ a Back2School initiative that enables parents pay their children’s school fees with recyclables
There are over 7 billion people in the world and the production of waste is daily. A staggering half of the waste are not collected,treated or safely disposed of. It is triggering a global waste crisis. Waste management, therefore, has to be addressed as a priority otherwise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be met. African Clean Up Initiative (ACI), an environmental Non Governmental Organization based in Lagos, Nigeria ,as part of its efforts to substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse (SDG 12), on Saturday, December 8, 2018 launched the ‘RecyclesPay,’ a Back2School initiative that enables parents pay their children’s school fees with recyclables
Nigeria is ranked as having one of the highest numbers of Out of School Children in the world. It becomes imperative for ACI to take up this herculean task of challenging all relevant stakeholders to play their role in creating an enabling environment for Children to remain in school.
RecyclesPay project was designed in fulfillment of ACI’s vision of promoting environmental sustainability and raising environmental responsible citizens. It is a platform that encourages parents to support the education of their children by ensuring they remain in school to learn and not to be sent out of school for their inability to pay their school fees.
The pre-project launch took place at MORIT International School, Ajegunle, a suburb in Lagos; this is the first adopted school of ACI for the RecyclesPay project. Through this project, parents of pupils in Morit International will have stipulated days they can remit their recyclables for pick up by the Recyclers.
Speaking to Diplomatic Watch, the School Proprietor of MORIT International School, Mr. Patrick Mbamarah, noted that “most parents in our school have been having difficulty paying school fees of their children each term. And this development is affecting the growth of the school”. He added that “Our School fee is Four Thousand Naira (N4,000),less than twelve dollars ($12) per term, yet parents still find it challenging to off set due to the economic situation of the country. This contributes to us not duly attending to the needs of our teachers. But with RecyclesPay, we believe parents will be able to pay up school fees using their accumulated PET bottles, Cans or Card boxes. We are optimistic that parents inability of paying or delaying in payment of school fees will be a thing of the past. And this will contribute to us keeping our environment clean. I do appreciate African Clean Up Initiative for this amazing eco-friendly solution.”
Mbamarah also stated that his vision for starting the schoolis to give children in his community equal opportunity of quality education astheir counterparts in highbrow areas.
The Chief Enviromental Officer of ACI, Mr. Alex Akhigbe also in a chat with Diplomatic Watch talked about how MORIT came to be the first school to be adopted in Ajegunle. He stated that “Mr. Mbamarah, a Lover of the Environment is always passionate about Environmental Sustainability, so it was easier proffering an eco-friendly solution to the issue of poor payment of school fees in his school.”
He further affirmed: “Aside him volunteering at environmental events, he also has encouraged his 9 year old son, Timothy to become a Waste Collector. The lad is already saving for his university education from recyclables he gets from their street, school or events outside school engagement according to his father”.
Parents of MORIT International School, Ajegunle received the pre-launch of RecyclesPay with great joy as they await the full launch at the ‘Lagos Beat Plastic Carnival’,an event organized also by ACI scheduled to hold in 2019. The Lagos Beat Plastic Carnival is an open event that is intended to give opportunity to members of the community to come with their recyclables to MORIT International School, Ajegunle and receive instant gift items in exchange of their recyclables. ACI is open to partnership towards the success of this project.
A parent who gave her name as Mrs. Mariam earlier shared with the ACI crew in her native dialect (yoruba language ) about being the most blessed by this project. She testified that consistently paying her children’s school fees has been a big issue to her and her husband due to economic challenge. However, she considers RecyclesPay as a big relief and a great way of generating money to pay her children’s school fees.She noted that recyclables are littered in abundance in her environment.
As a matter of fact, the parents are already set to take advantage of the forthcoming yuletide season to gather much recyclables from the environment.
ACI as an organization has put in place the mechanism that will ensure that all recyclables brought in by each parent are collected and weighed before handed over to the Recycling Venture and the money generated from the sales of the recyclables is remitted to the school management in lieu of payment of the student’s school fees and stationery.
