ATP Supports Schools against Covid19 Outreaches 2021

As an organization that is committed to the wellbeing of children; Ask The Paediatricians Foundation completed a survey of 200 schools in Nigeria to see how the schools are faring with the current Covid19 global pandemic and how we can support schools in keeping our children safe from Covid19 infection while they are learning. We discovered major gaps in the schools preparation and readiness to comply with the national guidelines for prevention of Covid19 infection. Majority of the schools (87%) expressed their need for awareness training and donation of hygiene items for their school communities to be able to comply with the prevention guidelines. Ask The Paediatricians Foundation then embarked on a project tagged "ATP Supports Schools Against Covid19 Awareness Campaign" with the aim of reaching 500 schools in Nigeria and Ghana with health education and awareness training on Covid19 prevention while also supporting with basic items such as facemasks, hand sanitizers, reminder and awareness posters.

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation started the projects nationwide in Nigeria on the 1st June 2021 and rounded it up at the end of September 2021. The awareness campaigns were well-received in all the schools visited with the schools - staff and students and pupils expressing their deep-felt appreciation to the Foundation for the laudable initiative. ATP Supports Schools Against Covid19 Outreaches took place in more than 40 States and Zonal Chapters including Ghana our latest ATP Chapter and the first country chapter outside Nigeria. Through this project we have reached 500 schools throughout Nigeria and Ghana. In addition to the health education; we  donated more than one thousand and five hundred units of 500ml hand sanitizers, more than 1500 cartons of Facemasks (each containing 50 units of facemasks), 4,000 large posters to remind school communities of the Covid19 prevention messages and lot of other hygiene materials. We are looking forward to our post-intervention impact survey at the end of the year to see how our support has made a difference in all the schools visited.

Unfortunately due to the local unrest and high spate of kidnappings; we were unable to reach schools in Kaduna, Niger and Imo States.  Our volunteers in these locations are however eager and would still do the outreaches and give out the materials as soon as security situation improves and schools resume fully. Most of the schools were very full of gratitude to Ask The Paediatricians Foundation for their support. Some of the videos from the events are available on our Instagram and Facebook pages. The project cost about N5Million naira so far not putting to cash value some donations of facemasks we received. We are grateful to our donors and especially to Global Giving for their support with $5000 Covid19 Emergency Fund. As the Covid19 pandemic begins to ease; we look forward to resuming our full outreaches in 2022.

We are excited to have contributed our quota to keeping the school communities in Nigeria and Ghana safe from Covid19.