Firm hosts 50 Lagos school kids to mark Children’s Day

To make this year’s Children’s Day a memorable one, Platform Capital in conjunction with Diatom Impact yesterday hosted over 50 children from 10 schools across five local government areas of Lagos State.

The theme for the 2021 International Children’s Day: “Unite to reverse the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on children” is instructive as it calls for more concerted efforts from the government in partnership with the private sector, in addressing the issues of poverty, malnutrition, poor infrastructure for learning and insecurity.

Director, Impact and Research, Diatom Impact, Anna Bethune said her firm has made a huge investment on children and since the children are our future there is need to honour and celebrate them by starting with events like this.

She said Platform Capital is an investment and advisory firm that invests in companies all over the world, while Diatom Impact is a part of Platform Capital Group. “At Diatom Impact we focus on social impacts. So we work across five areas critical to development in Nigeria and across the continent. We have education, entrepreneurship, gender equality, health and quality of life. So what we are doing today falls under quality of life. So because these children are less privileged, we decided to bring them to enjoy those things privileged children enjoy,” she said.

Bethune said this year Diatom Impact is going to spend about $3 milion on education, with key projects in mind, like the Adopt-a-school project. “This is where we are going to financially take charge of some schools across Nigeria, by providing them borehoes, electricity . We have identified some schools across the geo-political zones. So far we have adopted two schools, and we have provided scholarships to about 50 students and this would in time go up.  Today we have launched ‘The Beautiful ones are Born.’ Here, schoos will compete in spelling bees, debates, with the winning schools going away with N10 million, N5 million and N2.5 million.

“As you can see we are really investing in education and infrastructure. Our focus is children form the less privileged home, schools with leaky roofs, lack of seats, poor sanitary facilities and so on. This is our focus area, “ she said.