The Federal Government has
been called upon to look into the possibility of establishing a special low
interest rate fund to aid borrowings by private sector investors in social
services as a means of halting the decadence in the nation’s crumbling social
infrastructure.
Chief
Executive Officer of MeadowHall Group, Mrs. Kehinde Nwani, made the appeal
during a recent media roundtable in Lagos to announce the various on-going projects
and activities of the Group and its subsidiaries.
She noted
that the nation’s many infrastructure challenges make it wise for the
government to encourage more social entrepreneurs to have access to low-interest rate loans in order to actualize
the government’s dream of a private sector- led improvement in socio-economic
areas such as health, education, child development, talent discovery and human
capital enhancement.
“Drawing
from our experience of the evolution of the MeadowHall brand from inception to
date, we are convinced that the country still has a long way to go in achieving
basic globally accepted standards as far as social infrastructure is concerned.
The needs are really massive and government at various levels in the country
must do more to encourage social entrepreneurs, if the goal of holistic
development of the country is to be achieved”, Mrs. Nwani counseled.
Continuing,
she said: “Take the Education Sector for example. In order to achieve the goal
of raising the standard and quality of education, there is need for creative
and innovative support to public educational institutions especially in the
areas of teaching staff skills enhancement, advisory on standard operating
procedures and curriculum development as well as leadership training for
pupils, among others. Massive investment is required to achieve world class
standards in the areas highlighted above and government alone cannot undertake
the job successfully”.
“At interest
rates of between 20% and 26% charged by commercial banks in the country today,
it will always be a problem to get social entrepreneurs who are firmly
committed to partnering government in the task of social infrastructure
re-engineering because it is suicidal for social entrepreneurs to approach
Banks for loans”.
Mrs. Nwani
described the survival and evolution of MeadowHall as a story of resilience,
passion and patriotism. She noted that though MeadowHall started out in 2002 as
an infant/junior School in Lekki area of Lagos, the brand has today grown into
a multi-competency business comprising five subsidiaries namely MeadowHall
Education, SpringMeadow Edutainment, MeadowHall Consult, MeadowHall Foundation
and MeadowHall Branchise.
She said the
MeadowHall Education manages the Group’s investments in its core schools,
comprising its Junior Schools in Lekki and Ikoyi and the College in Lekki plus
other expansions envisaged in the future while the MeadowHall Consult which is
the educational consulting arm of the Group offers consultancy services
designed to enhance teachers’ skills levels and promote classroom productivity through
its various continuous development courses. To date, the MeadowHall Consult has
trained nearly 4,000 teachers drawn mostly from public schools on the platforms
of partnership ventures such as Eko Project, EduCamp, InnerCity Mission School
and SOS Children’s Villages Nigeria.
SpringMeadow Edutainment Company (SME), she
explained, was set up to inspire and nurture creativity in children through
specially designed programmes that provide opportunities for fun, entertainment
and learning. Its core offerings include STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, Math) Centre, SEN (Special Education Needs) Centre, Music Academy,
Language School, Book Café, Art Centre and Fitness Centre, among others.
On its own,
the MeadowHall Foundation, as the non-profit arm of the Group, is established
to support communities, public schools and the less privileged through various
charitable interventions and programmes such as adoption, donations, mentoring
and scholarships, among others.
Mrs. Nwani
further revealed that the MeadowHall Group is open to partnering with other well
meaning social investors and NGOs with passion for children development to
replicate the SpringMeadow Edutainment Company template across the country. She
said her organisation passionately believes that all Nigerian children should
have access to world class opportunities for all-round development. This
belief, according to her, motivated the establishment of the MeadowHall
Branchise as a platform to partner with other entrepreneurs with a passion for
children to leverage the MeadowHall experience and cutting edge resources to create
opportunities for holistic development of Nigerian children across
socio-economic divides.
“MeadowHall
is an idea that is solely about holistic development of the Nigerian child as a
member of a dynamic global family. This idea is being managed in a way that
will ensure it remains relevant to generations of Nigerian kids, even those yet
to be born. The more we are able to
replicate the idea across the country and even outside the country on a long
term basis, the more satisfying it is for us as the promoter and initiator of
the idea”, she revealed.
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