In light of the widespread economic difficulties that the country is currently experiencing, the purpose of our recent visit to EPP Adetikope, Lome in Togo on October 19, 2023, was to support and encourage the need for education among children with limited resources. During our successful visit, we had a chance to talk with a few of the teachers, who expressed their sincere gratitude and shared some of their challenges with us. Mr. Nadebe Mazama, one of the teachers, said the following:
“Hello, sponsors and readers. I’m Nadebe Mazama, and I work at EPP Adetikope Group C as a CM2 teacher. To be honest, We have lower-income students at the school. If a percentage is required, it needs to be at least 80/100. For the advancement of education, particularly in African schools. The challenges are tremendous.
First, some students lack the extra resources they need to finish their assignments and continue studying as requested by their teachers. Devices such as computers are necessary for us to continue to improve our knowledge. It’s true that obtaining instructional materials is difficult. These are a few of the challenges we have faced thus far. We sincerely appreciate Lema Plan International’s donations to our kids. This significantly lessens our work, as several of our students have already benefited from scholarships and educational supplies this year and in 2022 from Lema Plan International. After submitting numerous requests to different organizations.
Class matching is currently the biggest issue that teachers deal with. Group A and B pupils are being paired together. For instance, due to the shortage of teachers, in CM2 we are forced to merge pupils from CM2 A and CM2 B, resulting in an excess of students in a class. Therefore, having more than 120 students. This is also occurring in CE2 which has 124 students. CP1 consists of 104 pupils. Meeting every student’s needs is a challenge for teachers”.
At the end of the day, we promised teachers that we would keep doing everything within our power to support the continuation of education for children. Our commitment is especially to those living in rural areas. This has always been our objective in both Togo and Nigeria.