All roads led to Colliers row in London, where IA-Foundation held its inaugural black-tie fundraising dinner, held on Saturday 8th of February 2020. Just in time before the lockdown! The Foundation was founded by Mrs. Ibironke Adeagbo a renowned chartered accountant in the UK.
All the guests were looking immaculately dressed as they posed for pictures on the red carpet, where the canape was served and lots of networking and camaraderie was going on. Over three hundred guests filed into the immaculately decorated hall.
The opening prayers was said by Pastor Kolade Adebayo-Oke. In her welcome address, the founder, Mrs Adeagbo said this Foundation was set up, because she was getting concerned about the number of out -of-school children in Nigeria.
UNICEF carried out a survey in Dec 2018 and the survey confirmed that there are 13.2 million children out-of-school in Nigeria.
She believes if we do not address this problem now, it is a potential time bomb that could consume the country in the next few years. She said that security challenges and poverty were the main reasons the children were out of school, stressing that over 92 million Nigerians were living below the poverty line.
While acknowledging that the government had done well to make basic education free and compulsory, she said other things like feeding, uniform, books amongst others needed for schooling were not provided, hence the reluctance of parents to release their kids for school.
Mrs Adeagbo reiterated the purpose for staging theinaugural fund-raising dinner was to raise funds to tackle the challenge of out-of-school children in Nigeria and to remove any obstacle that can prevent a Nigerian child from getting good education.
She asserted that the government cannot do everything,and she encouraged the guests to support the Foundation in getting a Nigerian child off the street and into the classroom. This would tackle the poverty cycle, improve social mobility and the Nigerian economy.
She thanked the 10-man organizing committee led by Mr. Tunde Falode. They had worked tirelessly to make the event a success. The guests were thrilled by Nigerian artiste Weird MC of the ‘Ijoya’ fame. The guests enjoyed the American Auction, which raised lots of funds for the Foundation.
The Raffle draw was exciting lots of guests won prizes, especially the star prize of a 60” TV. The food was sumptuous, and the networking was superb. The guests all danced into the night to ‘old school’ and afrobeat songs dished out by popular UK DJ Omo Whyte. It was indeed a night to remember and guests were asking what date was the next one!