As the global community celebrated it’s children on Thursday, May 27, the Smile-Givers Charity Initiative, a faith-based non-profit organization, fetes hundreds of indigent children in parts of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital with gifts, snacks and nice music.
The gesture, according to Mrs Adetutu Adegunju, Chief Executive Officer of Smile Givers Charity Initiative, was in the spirit of love and care for the poor and venerable children who were daily exposed to exploration, lack and hunger in the face of the current economic reality in the country.
The NGO embarked on a rally from Baptist junction, Challenge area of Ibadan to Bode community, near Molete amid pump and pageantry as it shared varieties of gifts to street children that joined the trail.
Taiwo and Kehinde Ogbeide and Aisha Aliati were among the lucky children that received the little bags of gifts from the NGO. Taiwo and Kehinde, eight-year-old Primary 2 students of God’s Choice Nursery and Primary School, Ibadan and Aliati, a young crippled girl from Kano State, expressed joy at the rare show of love by the non-profit making organisation.
SGCI was established in 2018 with a vision to improve the quality of life of the less privileged children between age zero to 18 through feeding and intervention programmes.
In an interview with journalists on the occasion, Adegunju said, “At Smile Givers Charity Initiative, our mission is to put smile on the faces of the innocent children that wander the streets. Naturally, I am inclined to helping people especially the children. When I see them on the street my heart bleeds.
“At some point, in 2018, I decided to go out and do something different. People discouraged me by saying there is no money and they raised questions that who would fund this project. I said with God on my side, it is going to be well. Since 2018, it has been on. Presently, we have a school for the less privileged somewhere at Akobo. They are not paying school fees and they are well taken care of and are well fed.
“If other Nigerians can rise up to this task it would help the nation at large and put an end to insecurity in the land. Till date, we have not asked for government’s assistance.
“These children are victims of circumstances. They didn’t choose their parents, they didn’t choose their backgrounds and country. They just found themselves here. You can see them all over while the children of the elites are celebrating Children’s Day. We call on well meaning Nigerians to rise to their aid so that we can give them scholarship and put them in school for basic education.
“For parents who keep giving birth to children without considering their economic capacity, they should give birth to the number of children that they can cater for. We have lots of family planning schemes all over the place. We should be able to take care of our families well.
“Personally, I feel that the government has a lot to do in taking these children off the streets. In developed countries governments provide free education but here in Nigeria, we say that education is free and they still ask parents to bring N2,000 and buy books.
“Rather than pay the N2,000, parents and guardians use the children to hawk on the streets. We all should take this burden. It should not be only on the government. Those who have should rise up and take care of the poor children; they are the leaders of tomorrow. What we fail to do now will impact us negatively tomorrow.”
Mrs Folusho Johnson, Financial Controller, SGCI, said there should be a genuine commitment to giving children world over opportunity to attain the God-given potentials. “We think that the children who are wandering the streets should be useful to the country rather than merely wasting away,” she said.
