 Zovegalo Hope Foundation has charged stakeholders in the education sector to create a cultural environment where every child would feel valued, loved, respected, and included in decision-making processes. Chinanghe Onora, project manager of the Foundation, made the call at the sixth edition of the RHF 2024 Edit-Stake Conference held in commemoration of the International Day for Education in Lagos. She said the call became necessary as inclusion education would go a long way to reduce inequality, social exclusion, discrimination, but empower the people to recognize and value their unique abilities. Joining us live in our studios is Aurelio Lua Abiodun, who is a dedicated partnership and communication strategist at Regalo Hope Foundation. Thank you for joining us, Aurelio. Thank you for having me on. During the International Day of Education, your foundation's theme on that day was learning for lasting peace. Can you expand on that? Okay. Thank you so much. Once again for having me here. So during the International Day of Education, which we called the Edit-Stake Conference, coined from two words, educational stakeholders. So the theme was actually uniting for inclusive education, but the global theme for the International Day of Education was learning for lasting peace. So uniting for inclusive education to us, what it means is that we're pushing for inclusion because inclusion is a bedrock for diversity, inclusion sponsors diversity. So we're looking for an environment, or we're pushing for an environment where every child can feel included despite their abilities or disabilities or special needs. We're looking for a classroom where every child can feel loved, they can feel accepted and there is that communication. There's no breach in that communication between the special needs children and the, in quote, normal children. So at the Edit-Stake Conference, we brought together educational stakeholders. This conference was partnered. We had partners such as Right Foods Limited, Patent Avroco Limited, Byview Technologies. So we brought together educational stakeholders to drive this inclusive text, right? To drive this inclusive word to them. We created this conference to be able to empower them with the right insight. So when I talk about educational stakeholders, I'm talking about from students that secondary tertiary institution students, to educators, school providers, to community leaders and even the government, because we believe that these four key stakeholders play a vital role in education. So we hope to drive this message so that they are able to pick it and then they are able to run with it. Did you not teach us in that conference as well? Yes, we did have. Okay, so your focus this year is on education, you know. So your foundation said inclusive education will go a long way to reduce inequality. Can you explain shade of that? Okay, so we believe that education is not just a privilege. Education should be a fundamental right to everyone and anyone. And then like I mentioned, inclusive education is bringing together everyone together so that everyone can have a partner in education. What we have these days is like a segregation. So we have maybe people with special abilities learning in one place and then normal children in court learning in another center. But we want to bring all of these people in one classroom so that the people with the special needs or illnesses in court can also feel loved. They can feel accepted. They can have that ICF esteem. They can be able to interact with people, yes. And then we got a foundation in terms of education. We also run programs such as digital training, youth development workshop. And this year, one of the major goals that we have is to take the youth development workshop that we run to tertiary institutions because we've always had this program run in our resource and learning center. But because of the sitting capacity and the number of impact we want to reach this year, we're taking it to campuses. So the youth development workshop is actually designed to equip young people with the right skill sets, interpersonal communication skills, leadership skills, soft skills, so that they can stay relevant, so that they can be able to compete, so that they can be able to thrive in the market place. Okay, so you're saying that basically the special needs children do not need special schools? Yes. Is that what you're saying? Yes. So if they don't need special schools, do you think that they're going to have the same impactful education as the kids without special needs when they're in the same environment? Yes, so one of the solutions we prefer to this during the conference was that policies should be signed first off by the government to encourage these four institutions for secondary schools and tertiary institutions. And then also coming down to the schools and communities, they should be open minded to accept these children. They should be able to take extra hands, extra professional hands. They should be able to employ therapists to be able to help this course so that these children are able to learn at the same pace with every other child. Okay, so what can you say about uniting four inclusive education and how it can be implemented? Okay, so like I mentioned, one of the implementation is government policies. Yes. Secondly, schools being open minded to this because we started off with an educator seminar that we had where we just had only educators and teachers, but then we had to bring up this conference to be able to reach the media, to reach the press so that they can help us carry this information. We also had government representatives in this conference. So we believe that every institution should come together to unite because most times where we talk about inclusion, it's just a thing of the mouth. Like there's no real action coming into play. So we want actions, we want actions this year starting from this year, right? We want action so that everyone can come together to foster inclusion in education. So have you thought about having teachers who have special education for the special kids because you know special kids need more attention, more care and a certain syllabus that will suit them at their pace. Yes, so one of the many things that we also mentioned at the conference was a review of the curriculum, a review of the curriculum by the government. And one of the panellists is a diversity, inclusion and belonging strategist. So she pushed for that, right? She has three inclusive centers that she runs. So she also pushed for that, that we should have, we should look at the curriculum. So that it can accommodate those special needs children so that they can also learn at the same pace. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good work you're doing. Best of luck. See you and then the Ministry of Education because I know that they will be in charge of this. Thank you. Thank you very much.