The night before school resumes is supposed to be simple. A freshly ironed uniform hanging on the door. A new notebook, its pages still stiff and unwritten. The small, nervous excitement of wondering who your new class teacher will be.
For a boy we’ll call Tobi, that night looked different. His uniform was two sizes too small, the hem let down as far as it would go, a faded patch on the elbow where it had torn twice already. His school bag was really an old rice sack, the strap knotted where it had frayed. His mother sat with him at the table, doing quiet arithmetic in her head, not the kind in his workbook, but the kind that decides whether “resumption” is a word that includes her son this term.
Multiply Tobi by thousands, and you have September in Nigeria. It’s the month school reopens its doors, and the month many families quietly discover the door isn’t open to them at all.
The Season Nobody Talks About
Everyone talks about the excitement of a new term. Fewer people talk about the dread that comes with it for parents who are already stretched thin. A school fee that seems small on paper can be the difference between a child sitting in a classroom and a child sitting at home or worse, being sent out to hawk, to help on a farm, or simply to wait for “next term,” a promise that has a way of becoming next year, and then never.
This is the gap IA-Foundation’s Back to School Drive exists to close.
What the Drive Actually Does
The Back to School Drive isn’t a single gesture, it’s a coordinated push to make sure resumption day is a real possibility for children who would otherwise be left behind. Through the drive, IA-Foundation works to get:
- Uniforms and shoes into the hands of children whose old ones no longer fit or never fit right in the first place
- Books, bags, and basic learning materials so a child isn’t starting the term already behind
- School fee support for families for whom the cost of education, however modest, is simply out of reach
- Encouragement and follow-up for children and caregivers, because getting a child back into a classroom once means little if no one checks whether they’re still there in October
None of this is about charity for its own sake. It’s about timing. A uniform delivered in November doesn’t undo a term already lost. September is the window, and IA-Foundation works hard to meet it while it’s still open.
Why September Matters More Than Any Other Month
Nigeria carries one of the highest numbers of out-of-school children in the world, and the resumption period is where that statistic either grows or shrinks. Every child who is turned away, or quietly held back at the start of term becomes part of next year’s crisis. Every child who is helped through the door becomes proof that the gap can be closed, one classroom at a time.
That’s what makes the Back to School Drive different from a one-off donation moment. It’s a deliberate stand at the exact point where a child’s educational journey is decided not in the abstract, but on a specific Monday morning, at a specific gate, with a specific uniform that either fits or doesn’t exist.
The Difference a Term Can Make
Go back to Tobi. Picture the version of September where someone shows up, not with sympathy, but with a uniform that fits, a bag with his name almost pronounceable on the label, and someone telling his mother, plainly, that this term is covered. He walks in on the first day looking like every other child in that room. Nobody has to know what almost didn’t happen.
That’s the quiet, unglamorous magic of a Back to School Drive done right. It doesn’t just get a child through a gate once. It removes one more reason for a family to give up on school altogether, and it buys a child something far bigger than a term: the chance to keep going.
How You Can Be Part of It
The Back to School Drive runs on the support of people who understand that education isn’t a given, it’s built, term by term, gate by gate, uniform by uniform. You can be part of closing this gap by:
- Donating toward uniforms, books, and fee support for children resuming this term
- Sponsoring a child directly through IA-Foundation’s education support programmes
- Sharing this story so more people understand what’s at stake every September
- Volunteering your time during distribution and follow-up efforts
Every child deserves to walk into a classroom this September looking like they belong there, because they do.
Ready to help a child go back to school? Visit ww.ia-foundation.org to donate or learn more about the Back to School Drive.
Tobi’s story is a composite drawn from the realities IA-Foundation encounters each resumption season, representing the many children the Back to School Drive works to reach.
