By John Silas
In accordance with their humanitarian services to mankind and in continuation of the idea behind what they call Star Project, Rotary Club of Ikoyi (District 9110), after one month, has revisited Wahab Folawiyo Secondary School in Ikoyi, Lagos to distribute over 500 sanitary pads to the girls of the school.
The event was held at the Wahab Folawiyo Secondary School, in Ikoyi on Thursday. December 2, 2021.
Rotarian Sir Uche Obienu, President, Rotary Club of Ikoyi, while speaking to the media on the objective of the exercise he said, “We are here to do the second phase of our star project which is provision and distribution of sanitary pad to over 500 young girls of this school.”
Obienu also commented on the choice of Wahab Folawiyo Secondary School; he stated that it was done after a painstaking assessment and evaluation, “We did need assessment where we went to different schools and found out the particular one that has peculiar need, so we discovered that Wahab Folawiyo, the girls here, you know, it is government school, you know how things are in our country where people who attend government schools, the financial condition and situation of their status, so we decided to pick this school and make sure that, the girl-child being area of focus of Rotary Club International President, making sure the girl child is being taken care of, so we cue into that as a club and then we focus on that towards allying ourselves with President’s objective and directive.”
On whether it would be a continuous exercise he said, “We intend to continue for another 10 months, because this is just the second month, it is a one year project and we intend even extending to other schools, because it is our star project. And we know, the president-elect is here, there would be continuity towards making sure that in the months to come this girls have received sanitary pads that will make them attend school, make them to be clean, and also prevent disease.”
Obienu also stated that apart from the distribution of sanitary pads the club is also committed to other activities both in Wahab Folawiyo and other places. “We look at the condition of the girl child, most of them don’t go to school during their menstrual circle, most of them, you see them bleeding to school, most of them use unhygienic products like tissue papers, napkins and all the rest of them and we study this and we said in this 21st century in a state like Lagos state, and we said no, we need to come in, we need to be partners.
“It is not just sanitary pads, we have done a lot, we have done tree planting in this school, we have done distribution of dictionaries, and other major projects, you are aware that we have done a Global Grand Project where we build a blood donor centre for police hospital at Falomo, but this particular project is also so peculiar, so dear to us in this rotary year that we must carry it out and carry it out very well,” Obienu added.
Rotarian Adenike Aroloye, Director, Rotary Club of Ikoyi said “We have chosen to give the girl students here sanitary pad every single month till the rotary year ends. So what we are doing here is a continuation of what we started last month. This is the school we are starting with, we may attend to one or two other schools as time goes on, but we have other projects going on here too.”
Rotarian Austin Irabor, President-elect of Rotary Club of Ikoyi, on his part assured the world that the project of distribution of sanitary pad to the school will continue in his administration “I am the president-elect, what it means is that by this time next year I will become the president. We have succession plan. We feel happy doing this, it is one of the objectives of Rotary, we feel proud to help those who are in need, so rotary all over the world is part of what we do regularly, we have other projects, like helping the school, reviving toilet facilities, healthcare, blood donor, so we do that with all sense of responsibility.
“Definitely, it is part of the projects we will continue with at least for the whole of this year, we are going to run it till the middle of next year, and then we have other projects which we will add to this, but this now we want to be sure that we are going to maintain it, to ensure the students are benefitting from it and they are quite happy with it,” Irabor stated.
