Until he enrolled at a new school that offered a creative solution, fourth-grader Fawas Adeosun from Nigeria used to frequently get sent home from school through the grimy streets of Lagos because his mother, Fatimoh, had not paid his fees.
In the huge, destitute Ajegunle community where the Adeosuns reside, My Dream Stead School is one of 40 free schools that accept recyclable refuse as payment.
For the past four years, parents have been bringing bottles, cans, drink cartons, and plastic containers into the schools, which a local environmental organisation called African Cleanup Initiative has been collecting and selling to recyclers.
The sales revenue covers a variety of costs, including instructor wages, kid’s clothes, books, and pens.
According to Alexander Akhigbe, the organization’s founder, the programme attempts to decrease both the number of kids skipping school and the amount of trash on Lagos’ streets.
My Dream Stead charges $130 in year tuition, and to accommodate its 120 students, it is expanding into a second apartment building. When it first debuted in 2019, there were just seven youngsters enrolled.
Fatimoh and Fawas occasionally travel to school together while carrying heavy garbage sacks on their shoulders. On school grounds, the rubbish is weighed, and the sales value is added to Fawas’ account.
“Sometimes if he wants to buy sportswear, the school will tell me the amount I need to bring,” said Fatimoh, a 48-year-old hairdresser who cares for six children on her own.
Since Fawas, the youngest, was made to leave the space she used as a salon in 2018, it has been very challenging to provide for her.
She stated as she searched the streets for recycling bins on her walk home from the school, “When I realized they could collect the plastics from me to keep my child in school, it made my burden lighter.”
