A Change from the Grassroots.
‘One, two, buckle my shoes. Three, four knock at the door…’
A visit to an average school on a Monday morning, you would hear the kids reeling out their rhymes and if it is a higher-grade class, you may find some students, aggressively writing notes from the chalkboard. In a typical Nigerian city, there are schools in every corner.
However, in rural communities, where we have about half of our entire population (DHS 2008), the story is different.
For a large population of children living in rural communities, having access to quality education is pure luxury. As a result of the depth of poverty in these communities, parents are unable to afford standard education for their children. Quality basic education is expensive and inaccessible to more than half of the population of school-going aged children in Nigeria.
In fact, according to UNICEF in 2018, over 13 million children in Nigeria do not go to school while a 2017 report from World Bank showed that more than 10% of children who went through public primary schools in rural areas of Nigeria cannot read, write, or complete basic arithmetic.
To address this problem, Odunayo Aliu founded Bramble, an organisation that focuses on the emotional, social, mental, and physical development of children living in rural and marginalised communities.
In 2019, Bramble opened the first alternative learning system in Arikanki village. Before this time, there was no school or any learning facility for children and young people living in Arikanki. Bramble is the first to introduce such a unique alternative learning system in Nigeria; offering a comprehensive and holistic learning experience to children from the poorest of communities. The learning space offers children an opportunity to develop and fulfill their dreams, leveraging the power of information and communications technology.
The Bramble Learning Space currently serves children and young people from five village communities in Akinyele local government area, Ibadan. Bramble aims to raise children who exhibit great communication and social skills, problem-solving attitude, good collaborative spirit, creative and critical thinking.
In addition to this, Bramble is working with other educators and interested stakeholders to replicate this unique tech-enabled initiative in other rural communities, creating a movement that will rewrite the narratives around quality education in Nigerian villages.
