Foundation awards university scholarship to 25 police widows’ children in Lagos

By Sunday Ani

A nongovernmental charity organisation based in the United States of America, Kedrick Scribner Foundation, has extended its humanitarian campaign to widows of the fallen heroes of the Nigerian Police Force. The Foundation offered university scholarships to 25 children of the police widows, who passed their senior secondary school certificate examination.

The scholarship offer was made at a three-day programme, tagged, “The Widow’s Mite 2.0,” which took place at the United Church of Christ in Nigeria, AKA HEKAN, in the Mounted Troops Police Barracks, Lagos.

The Foundation, which globally provides resources necessary for people to live sustainably, also offered one-year medical insurance to 180 police widows in the state.

Speaking at the end of the programme, the Founder, Dr Kedrick Scribner, said the scholarship would help the widows to achieve their dream of sending their children to the university.

He said: “On Saturday, it was student’s career talk, and we partnered the Byinks Foundation, which was able to come in to share with us the responsibility of giving scholarships to the students. For the students that are entering colleges, we are going to give them full scholarships from 100 levels to the final level as long as they keep their grades up.

“If you don’t keep your grades up, we cannot continue with the scholarship. This scholarship will give light to some children that would never have the opportunity to pay for a university education.

“From the scholarship, we have 25 students, but this is not the end of the process because even if you have a child in the primary or secondary school, we have a scholarship for you. We programmed 100 women for the medical insurance, but we ended up giving 150 of them the insurance cover for the next year.”

Still on the scholarship, one of the partners of the programme and President/Founder of Byinks Foundation, Banire Olayinka, said the Foundation would help the selected students to gain admission into any federal university of their choice.

Olayinka said the scholarship covers school fees for the duration of the course, acceptance fees and every other necessary payment. He noted that the students were at liberty to study any course of their choice.

He said: “On Saturday, we were able to confer scholarships to students that have written their West African Examination and are expecting results in July and August. In doing that, we are going to ensure that we will help them to gain admission to our federal universities. We don’t do state universities and we don’t do private universities except Lagos State University.

“Aside from that, we are also going to take some students that are already in school to see how we can support them in a few ways and those that are about to gain admission to follow up on them.

“The modality of selection is that the students must be from public school, they must be from this community, they must be children of widows and they must be orphans with quality WAEC results.

“You must pass the core subjects that would qualify you to gain admission into the university. And there is no exception to the course the person can study. We equally don’t expect them to give back to us rather, they should look for other people to help.”

On his part, the US representative of Washington DC, Dr. Oye Owolewa, called on Nigerian-American citizens to come back home and support the less-privileged in the country.

“I have decided to be here to give back to my people and also show them what could be done when you have a good heart. The efforts of the Kedrick Scribner Foundation would restore hope because we have people who have lost it all and people who live in areas that are not conducive.

“This is our way of telling them that we care and we are trying to bring the private sector and other Nigerian-Americans to the table, not only to do what we are doing right now, but also to make it bigger in supporting other communities that deserve this as well.

“I hope that my presence will inspire people to do more. You don’t have to be an elected official or a person of note; you just have to care. But, there is an added level of responsibility for us Nigerian-American to come back home, see where we are from, especially if you are born in America like myself, to see that there are opportunities for us to get involved in the betterment of the people from our communities,” he said.