A couple's quest to educate the poorest among them

Nestled between dozens of narrow, tin-roofed structures sits a slightly larger, faded concrete building guarded by a couple of stray dogs at its doorstep. It would be indistinguishable from those around it, if not for the lively voices drifting through the windows into the street outside.

Inside, dozens of children are perched in clusters on wooden benches, reciting vocabulary words scrawled on the chalkboards around the room. Across the hall, the youngest of the children dance and sing nursery rhymes.

Walking between the two crowded rooms is Timothy Oladehinde, 51, the proprietor of Caliberian Nursery and Primary School in the Daramola slum community in Ijota, Lagos.  

Oladehinde and his wife, Jane, opened the school in 1985 hoping to provide low-cost education for children in slum communities. Since then, the school  has been in five different communities due to struggles in finding adequate space to fit the growing number who enroll. Now, the Oladehindes and four other teachers instruct roughly 50 students each term.

Oladehinde said although running the privately funded school is difficult, seeing his students achieve is worth it.

“What makes me happy is that no matter that the students are learning in a poor environment, when we teach them, they understand and they are learning,” Oladehinde said.

“They are progressing day by day.”

As part of the school program, students at Caliberian learn basics in English, mathematics, technology, science, home economics, physical education and art.

But Oladehind’s hope is that the school teaches the students about more than what can be found in a textbook.

“We do not base our teaching on only class activity,” he said. “At times we give them counsel about their peers, how to face peer pressure … We teach them how to be of good behaviors. They can think of us as a model.”

Photos by Kaitlin Englund