OUR STORY

A country like Nigeria is extremely blessed with countless natural resources and a population that can provide the manpower to lift itself out of poverty. However, that promise of success, one intuitively believed in by our grandparents and their parents, has remained unachieved decades after independence.

One key reason for this is the tumbling level of local education.

Investment in education has woefully been but a sliver of the National budget for decades, leaving institutions underfunded. The result is that Nigerian schools have churned out graduates unprepared to enter the work economy. That shortage in skilled workers has proven a detriment time and again. Yet, the cycle continues.

To counter this unfortunate reality, the Janet Namme Educational Fund aims to establish the framework by which Nigeria produces globally competitive children poised to set the world ablaze.

A duly registered non profit organization in Texas, USA, the Fund was created in honor of the late Mrs. Janet Ara Oben Namme. She was one of Nigeria’s most respected educators who believed in the power of education as a means to personal and national achievement.

As a teacher and Principal at some of Nigeria’s key primary and secondary institutions, Mrs. Namme was instrumental in transforming students into high performers in English and Mathematics. Even after retiring from the employ of the Ministry of Education, she took it upon herself to create a private company, Edukonsult, that tested students across Nigeria’s sprawling economic and commercial capital, Lagos State. She thereby created a metric by which parents and schools could gauge the performance of their students from year to year beyond mere school based exams at the end of term.

Following that example, the Janet Namme Educational Fund will continue Mrs. Namme’s legacy of preparing Nigerian students to excel at their school work. In conjunction with a global leader in Child, College and Professional assessment and learning solutions, the Fund will provide the Assess Program. This program will be a series of universal tests, provided for free to students, to check how well they have learned and retained information each year. The test results will enable parents and schools to track the progress of their children in English, Mathematics and other subjects. By providing the Assess Program at no cost, the Fund achieves a key goal of preparing Nigerian students for the types of standardized tests that are used the world over. And as a result, these children will get one step closer to becoming well educated, globally competitive members of society.

A further benefit of the program’s approach is that our children will be able to seamlessly fit into any educational system that they eventually end up in. Be it an institution of higher learning in Nigeria, another African country, in Europe or in North America. Plus, in a short period of time, the results of the Funds programs will serve as a guide, to parents, on which schools provide the best returns on quality education.

OUR CAUSE

The Janet Namme Educational Fund is focused on improving early education by commencing with students in their third year of primary school. In order to achieve this goal, the Fund must raise funds to tackle four Points of Action:

1. Procuring Product: the purchase of testing products;
2. Administration of the Tests: the rental of a location and other supplies, including tablets and laptops to facilitate testing;
   
3. Collation and Reporting of Results: the publication and dispersal of scores and the ranking of participating schools; and the
4. Award Ceremony: recognizing and celebrating the top 10 students for their achievement.

For the first year, the Fund will test 600 students from 60 schools across Lagos State at no cost to them. Home to over 21 million people, and with an estimated 5 million children in school, Lagos has over 1009 primary schools. The Fund’s goal of targeting 600 students initially is only a first-step. In the next 5-10 years, these standardized tests will be extended across the State and around the entire country.

The world we know today is very different from that familiar to those a generation or two ago. Constantly evolving technology and the demands of the global economy require bright minds capable of quickly adjusting to frequently changing factors. With its Assess Program, the Janet Namme Education Fund will prepare Nigerian students to play such integral roles and ultimately help shape a future Nigeria that is much better than the version we have today.