Nov 27th 2021
Dear Friends,
We hope you have all had a great year and are looking forward to 2022. The past two years have tested everyone’s resolve and resilience quite a bit. We hope you and your families continue to be safe and healthy.
On our end, we have had to rethink how we engage with our target communities and have had to find different ways to continue doing our work, given the disruptions of the past two years. Here are some program highlights from 2021:
Scholars Program & Coding Camps
We welcomed 32 new 10th Graders into our Scholars Program this fall. They will be with us for the next three years, receiving academic scholarships, coding training and other support. This brings to 130 the number of students who have been in our Scholars Program since we started in 2017.
After being forced to shut down our coding classes at the start of the pandemic, we were able to reopen in the past year with 80 of our scholars participating.
Sickle Cell Campaign
In May, we announced the establishment of the A.S.K. Scholarship and Medical Fund, in partnership with our friends Ese and Mari Sifo. We are pleased to let you know that we held our first event under this program last month. Over a three-day period in Omu-Aran, Kwara State, Nigeria, we held a sickle cell awareness campaign. We set up a temporary testing site and tested 641 students in the community ranging from ages 10-18. We found more than 10 students who either tested positive for sickle cell or had an inconclusive result. We have set up a partnership with a local clinic to provide counseling, further testing, evaluation of any current complications, and ongoing treatments for these students.
Giving Tuesday
This year we are participating in the #GivingTuesday campaign. Please consider making a donation — on Tuesday or any other time — to support our initiatives.
As always, we thank you for your support.
Babatunde Abidoye, Director and Co-Founder
Akin Adekeye, Director and Co-Founder