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n line with its education programmes, a non-governmental organisation, Helpline Foundation for the Needy based in the nation’s capital, has awarded scholarship to three vulnerable children from primary to junior secondary school level.
Subsequently, the foundation has used this season of Christmas celebration to distribute food and clothing items worth millions of naira to over 500 widows in the six area councils of Federal Capital Territory.
This year’s event, according to the founder, brings a total number of 400 children on the sponsorship list of the foundation since 2005.
President of the goundation, Mrs. Jumai Ahmadu told journalists in Abuja during a banquet sales of assorted items that out of this number, 15 children are on the foundation’s special list, even as she maintained that efforts were being intensified to upscale the scholarship scheme to higher level of education.
Speaking on this year’s theme, ‘Towards a Better Future for the Vulnerable Children,’ Mrs. Ahmadu explained that the foundation organised the barbeque sale to enable it to raise funds to empower widows as well as to pay school fees for over 390 children under the foundation’s scholarship scheme.
She called on government and other cooperate bodies to use this season of Christmas to assist the less privileged in the society, noting that such kind gesture would ameliorate the suffering and reduce crime rate in the society.
In a related development, the foundation over the weekend staged a Charity Road Show with a view to building confidence in the less privileged of the society.
Orphans and widows who deferred the early morning sleep came out in thousands and marched through the Festival Road in Garki to Area 1, even as they called on other rich members of the society to support the efforts of the foundation.
Those that attended the Charity Walk Show included the secretary in charge of Health and Human Service Secretariat in the Federal Capital Territory Administration, Dr. Demola Onakomaiya, special assistant to the FCT Minister of State on Social Development, Mrs. Uche Nwafor among other personalities.