300 Cross River Children to Enjoy Free Education from Rochas Foundation

About 300 children in Cross River State would benefit from free education as well as one meal each day courtesy of the Rocha’s Foundation school.

Speaking at her mentor’s interactive cocktail in Calabar yesterday, the Deputy Chief of staff to the President of Rocha’s Foundation, Uloma Uche Nwosu, disclosed that the programs would start by January.

Nwosu said: “The Rocha’s Foundation has come to Cross River State, we are opening in January. The Rocha’s Foundation has about 11 colleges across Nigeria. This is our first school in the south-south and the very first in Cross River State.

“Cross River is the twelfth school we are establishing in the country, we chose cross river because through our research, we discovered that there are a lot of out of school children in the state that is why we are starting here.

“We have been in the streets scouting for the “Scolombo” children the in the past 10 days, so we are making sure that while we are targeting 300 children most of those “Scolombo” out of school children, once we find them, we will give them automatic admission to our school.

“We have trained over 25,000 children and have produced 6,000 graduates as medical doctors, engineers, lawyers and still counting.

“We are going to have sub stations in the rural areas since Cross River is so large and you cannot have a child from Obudu coming to attend school in Calabar, so we will take the school to the streets where we will have sub stations for the foundation,” Uloma said.

The Director of Schools, Rev. Dr. Caro Ochemba, said that their target for admission were indigent children and orphans.

Ochemba explained that in the course of recruiting teachers, about 700 applicants are currently seeking to be employed by the foundation as teachers.

“Two key words, the child must come from an indigent home. Then orphan, however, you must be seen to be intelligent.

“In our schools we have 7,000 children currently in school, so we are experienced in this project.

“We have been in Cross River in the past one week, we have come to Cross River 700 applicants looking for jobs.

“But we are insisting on people that have passion for the job apart from being educated. In our schools, we allow every children to choose their career.

“Caring for 7,000 children at a go is huge, so we are concentrating on academics for now other thing like skills acquisition will come subsequently as we expand,” she said.

The Rocha’s Foundation was founded by the former Governor of Imo State, Senator Rocha’s Okorocha. The foundation is said to be in a mission to provide education for Nigerian and African children.

The foundation is arriving the south-south part of Nigeria for the first time, and is the first of its kind in Cross River State.

Source: This Day