Sponsor a child's education
How does child sponsoring work?
Due to serious economic problems and high inflation in Nigeria, the cost of books and other study materials has gone up. At Integral School, a monthly school fees equivalent of (€ 18), is now needed to provide school supplies, pay the teachers, and keep the school running. This is an amount many families can’t afford. Therefore, we ask sponsors to contribute € 15 and the underprivilege family to contribute the remaining € 3 monthly. We don’t want sponsors to pay the full school fees of the child they sponsor, because it’s important for parents to also have a sense of ownership towards the education of their child.
What happens when I start sponsoring a child?
• Sponsors receive a picture of the child, with the name and a short profile. Every year we send sponsors a new picture and an update on how the child is doing.
• Sponsors can also send a picture twice a year to the child.
• We give sponsors the chance to send the child a letter twice a year: once on his or her birthday and once at any time the sponsor would like (e.g. Christmas, before summer break etc.).
• The children can write a reply to their sponsor’s letter, which is good for their letter writing skills and international orientation.
• Sponsors who want to visit the child or the school, are most welcome. Contact our organization for more information.
*All things mentioned above are optional.
*Exchange of letters between children and sponsors will be through our organization, to guarantee the sponsors privacy
We will inform you twice a year on all the progress in and around the school through our newsletter!
Nigeria’s primary school system explained
Nigeria has two types of primary schools: public schools and private schools. Below we’ll give you a short summary of the system.
Public schools
These schools are government owned and for free, which means every child can attend. On a first glance, it seems great that all children have access to education. However, the facilities at the public schools are very poor and the classrooms are overcrowded. It’s almost impossible to teach and learn in these circumstances. This results in thousands of poorly educated children that can’t pass the High School entry examination. It also leads to high rates of school drop-outs.
Private schools
- Private schools focus on making profit. This results in crowded classrooms, without well qualified teachers. The educational quality is not significantly higher than on public schools, but private schools have more status. Therefore, parents would rather pay for private schools, but all still have low educational standards. Few rich people in the large cities enjoy high quality schools with extreme high school fees, which only the elite can afford. Therefore, at Integral School we provide high quality education, for an affordable price, with a maximum of 20 children per classroom.
Most families earn less than € 75 a month
- Currently, the Nigerian government’s official minimum wage is ₦ 30.000 (about € 75) monthly. However, this is applicable for those who are fortunate to work for the Federal Government. If you don’t work for the government, wages are lower. Now imagine having a family with 2 or 3 children and you don’t work for the government. This is a dilemma for the majority of Nigerian parents, who can’t pay for their children to have a decent education.