We are raising 460,000 — 115,000 for each of four girls in our scholarship program to cover their full school fees for the upcoming session. In her own words, Amina said ‘my career goal is to create a library in my village for a girl child that could not go to school to get access to the library and read’ Amina cannot achieve this goal without completing her education. Amina needs (10,000 for books for a term, 14,000 for her department and faculty dues and 115,000 for full fees” ) These four have already done the hard part. Nationally, at least 1 in 4 girls in Nigeria are married before adulthood; a number that climbs to nearly 4 in 10 in some regions and it’s early marriage, not a lack of ability, that pulls most girls out of school for good. These four chose differently. They enrolled. They stayed. What stands between them and their classroom now is a fee balance they cannot close on their own. Miss this window, and the stakes for a girl are steeper than a delayed term. Every additional year a girl stays enrolled lowers her risk of child marriage and early pregnancy; every year she is forced out raises it. This is not four missed lectures, it is four futures at a fork in the road. This is what it takes to keep four girls on the path they chose for themselves.
Ema4Kids believes that of all the investments a community can make, few break cycles of poverty and exploitation faster than keeping a girl in school. In Nigeria, girls from the poorest households make it to secondary school at a rate of just 9%, compared to 81% from the wealthiest; a gap that has almost nothing to do with ability, and almost everything to do with whether someone was willing to close it. Child marriage alone is estimated to cost the Nigerian economy more than $10 billion a year, largely because it cuts a girl’s odds of finishing secondary or higher education by nearly a quarter. Right now, four girls are waiting to find out if they will be allowed to walk back into a classroom. They are orphans. They are survivors of conflict and poverty most of us will never have to understand. And still, against every reason to give up, they showed up. They enrolled. They chose to believe their story doesn’t end where it started. But a new session which is beginning on October 07th does not wait for funds to arrive. Registration is stalling. The momentum these girls fought so hard to build is quietly beginning to slip. Every day that passes without support is a day closer to a seat going empty and closer to becoming one more girl the statistics predicted, instead of one who beat them. We refuse to let that happen without a fight.
Your support does something very specific: it reopens a classroom door for four girls who have already proven, over and over, that they deserve to walk through it. It also does something the statistics can not capture. Every year these four stay in school a year further from early marriage, early pregnancy, and the exploitation that follows girls pushed out of the classroom too soon and a year closer to becoming the mentors, professionals, and leaders their communities need. It tells four young women who have already known loss and instability that someone sees them, consistently, session after session. This is about protecting everything Ema4Kids has already invested in these girls’ futures. A scholarship interrupted by unpaid fees is a promise broken and for a girl, that broken promise carries a cost few other interruptions do. Help us keep it. Help turn “enrolled” into “returning” and turn four futures that could have been cut short into four futures that keep moving forward. Give today. Help a girl stay exactly where she chose to be; in class!.
Hub One, 10, Hughes Avenue, Off Herbert Macaulay Way, Yaba 101212, Lagos, Nigeria
Tel: +2349070663915
Email: support@donate-ng.com
