Education, literacy in Naija

Life no easy oh. Even though I am working from home today, I am on conference calls back to back. Things are really hectic at work right now, decisions to be made, reports to be written and presentations to complete.

Even though it is Friday tomorrow and the weekend is approaching, I still have alot of things to do. I am off to the engineering forum of Nigeria annual general meeting, I am meeting a friend straight after to talk about a business proposal in naija and then I am going around London to pick up donations for my orphanage project in naija.

In the middle of all these, I am trying to be a good wife and home keeping. Yoruba say “I no go die"... the Lord is my strength.

I am thinking about writing some children books, pre-primary school age, to promote literacy in naija and Africa. I started thinking about this when I met a lovely and very intelligent 2ys 6mth old girl in London recently. She is Nigeria, but in the UK on holiday and her mum bought her one of these "A is for Apple, B is for Boat" books and 'cos she does not live in the UK or in a developed society, she could not relate to some of the things in the book. e.g. “e is for elf",” f is for fairy"... I can imagine naija parents in naija thinking, elf ke!, that is demonic, that is ogbanje or that na witch! The problem with this is her level of awareness of very simple words and a wider vocabulary is limited. I remember when I came back to the UK, I realised that I lacked some basic vocabularies, to help me socially interact with people easily.

I know this is a wide thought, but I guess if I can give the book away free to nursery and primary schools in Nigeria, then I will have to pay for the publishing and distribution of the books itself. The other way to go about it is producing the book, together with another one, which people will receive free when they buy one of them. Another option is to get some form of grant or funding to publish and distribute the book for free. I guess I need to find a funding geared towards media literacy, education, and awareness etc. Any ideas of how to go about doing this in naija and Africa?

I have just seen a charity organisation that produced a cyberbullying DVD and got some corporate organisations and the government pay for the production and distribution to all schools in the UK. You can view the DVD here :http://www.digizen.org/cyberbullying/.

Or if anyone knows a government department, or corporate organisation that would like to support literacy in young children in Nigeria, put them by way.