Midyear 2017, our most pressing milestone was catering for victims of the insurgency and violence that rocked Northeast Nigeria and left many families displaced, and many children out of school. The foundation planned and implemented the Emergency Education Programme which set up make-shift classrooms and schools in IDP Camps in Abuja, starting with the Internally Displaced Persons Camp (IDP) in Karonmajiji, Airport Road. The program served as a transition for disenfranchised children from their unfamiliar communities, to the conventional school system.
At the close of the program in 2018, we had put over 150 children in schools at different levels, and in the process of that integration, we discovered some students in the public schools who kept repeating classes or had to drop out for lack of tuition fees; then came the question “What more can we do?”
The foundation created a common fund to cater for the education of children outside our own foundation programs, so now, anyone, anywhere, can access our scholarships and education grants and get the support they need to get through school in Nigeria.
In 2019, to take it up a notch, the foundation thought to include Tertiary Scholarships to the Scholarship Fund with the Aham Rochas Scholarship 2019 which was a platform for university students to access grants to cover tuition fee payments in Federal Universities across Nigeria.
These Universities included:
University of Nigeria Nsukka
Federal University of Technology
Ahmadu Bello University Zaria
University of Abuja
University of Jos
University of Portharcourt
Obafemi Awolowo University
University of Calabar
BAyero University Kano
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University
Our Pyramid Strategy
A huge part of our mission of lending a helping hand to the less privileged, is also to encourage other people to help the ones around them no matter how little the effort.
We envision a world where people are emphatic to the struggles of others, and community development becomes not just the business of governments, but the business of the people.
Our Pyramid Strategy was borne out of our experiences with our community of beneficiaries over the years. We have come to understand that; when we help people secure education, they go ahead to secure jobs or other forms of livelihood, and the more their resources grow, more people within their immediate and extended circle get uplifted.
This forms an imaginary pyramid where help trickles down, expanding along the chain. While this was a spontaneous effect of charity and the inherent good in the people who have benefited from us, we have acknowledged this effect and decided to cultivate it as a strategy moving forward.
Based on the Pyramid Strategy, the following initiatives came about:
- ARF Community (Aham Rochas Foundation Community)
- Aham Rochas Foundation – “Hope Hour”