According to the latest reports on out-of-school children (OOSC) in Nigeria by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) there are 20 million out-of-school children presently in Nigeria. Similarly, according to the latest global data on out-of-school children in early 2023 by the United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) the total number of out-of-school children in Nigeria is estimated to be over 20 million, 69 per cent of which is shared by the northern part of the country. A good number of these children have either never sat within the four walls of a school classroom or had dropped out either because they are orphans or their parents lacked the funds to put them through school. Many of these young people may grow up to constitute miscreants and may also enter into crimes.

In view of this looming danger and in line with Dpat Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that has for over four decades been involved in grassroots empowerment via skill acquisitions training and small scale business empowerment for women, girl-child and youths, recently floated a scholarship scheme and sixty (60) out-of-school children from within the FCT were pick and offered scholarship through primary to secondary school starting from the 2023/2024 academic session. This is the first batch to be followed by subsequent batches in subsequent school academic sessions.Our focus is mainly on women empowerment and girl-child education, even though we do not exclude men and boys from our various schemes. We believe that the responsibility of making the future safer extends to making sure children today are inoculated with sound education. The children we ignore today will get our attention tomorrow through crime. All hands must be on deck to stem the alarming tides of out-of-school children and its attendant future consequence.We therefore invite you to be part of this ongoing project. Your partnership will go a long way.