Rochas Foundation To Open School In C’River, Provide 300 Children Free Education
Rochas Foundation has pledged to provide 300 Cross River children free education and at least one meal each day in the school it going to open in January 2022.
This was disclosed by the Deputy Chief of staff to the President of Rochas Foundation, Uloma Uche Nwosu at her Mentor’s interactive cocktail held in Calabar on Monday evening.
According to her, “The Rochas Foundation has come to Cross River State. We are opening in January. The Rochas Foundation has about 11 Colleges across Nigeria. This is our first school in the south south and the very first in Cross River State.
“Cross River is the twelfth school we are establishing in the country, we chose Cross River because through our research, we discovered that there are a lot of out of school children in the state. That is why we are starting here.
“We have been on the streets scouting for the skolombo children the past ten days, so we are making sure that while we are targeting 300 children, most of those number will be the skolombo out of school children. Once we find them we give them automatic admission to our school.”We have trained over 25,000 children and have produced 6,000 graduates as medical doctors, engineers, lawyers and still counting.
“We are going to have sub-stations in the rural areas since Cross River is so large and you cannot have a child from Obudu coming to attend school in Calabar. So, we will take the school to the streets where we will have sub stations for the foundation.”
Also speaking, the Director of Schools, Rev. Dr. Caro Ochemba said their target are indigent children and orphans.
She said that while recruiting teachers, about 700 applicants are currently seeking to be employed by the foundation as teachers.
“Two key words, the child must come from an indigent home and must be orphan. However, you must be seen to be intelligent.”In our schools we have 7,000 children currently in school, so we are experienced in this project.
“We have been in Cross River the past one week, we have come Cross 700 applicants looking for jobs.”But we are insisting on people that have passion for the job apart from being educated. In our schools, we allow children choose their career.
“Caring for 7,000 children at a go is huge, so we are concentrating on academics for now. Other things like skills acquisition will come subsequently as we expand,” she said.
The Rochas Foundation was founded by former Governor of Imo State, Senator Rochas Okorocha, and is on a mission to provide education for Nigerian and African children.