Gideon Olanrewaju

Gideon has created a system of learning hubs for displaced children in internally displaced people’s camps. These hubs offer unique educational opportunities, employment for family members, and nutrition to support learning and eventually guide students back into formal learning.

Gideon has developed a alternative transformative educational model for out-of-school, displaced children affected by the refugee crisis in Nigeria adressing the gaps in the traditional educational system and meets the unique needs and challenges of refugee youth through a three-pronged approach.

Gideon has created a new multi-generational educational initiative called ‘Fastrack,’ tailored to the specific learning needs of displaced children within the communities. He leads an extensive mapping exercise within camps before rolling out the work. These programmes have a joint purpose. First, he offers a suite of bilingual (English and Hausa) digital, and entrepreneurial education. Secondly, he engages parents and builds their confidence in the program by providing employment opportunities within his designed learning system, offering full family support. Finally, he realized that basic core needs must be met in order for any program to work, and implemented a school feeding program to ensure that the children have the necessary nutrition to learn and thrive.

Gideon's work has struck a chord with the government as it addresses children's learning needs while nourishing their development, and crucially, it involves parents as active partners in their children's progress. His idea has been replicated by organisations across four countries and has reached more than 18,000 children across 290 camps and communities in Benue, Borno, Kano, Adamawa, Katsina, Abuja (FCT), and Jigawa states. His efforts have helped more than 11,600 children return to formal schooling.

The combined effect of the Boko Haram insurgency, violent banditry, killer herdsmen crisis, and heavy-handed counter-insurgency operations have triggered a devastating refugee crisis in Northern Nigeria. Its impact on education in the region has been profound. According to the December 2022 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) country report on Nigeria, there are a little over 3.4 million internally displaced children in Nigeria owing to the Boko Haram insurgency and activities of bandits.

Schools are regularly attacked by Boko Haram insurgents, resulting in the killing and abduction of both students and teachers. Children and adolescents suffer from extreme safety risks such as abduction and forced recruitment by insurgent groups, all of which contribute to school drop-out. Widespread poverty is a compounding factor preventing students from accessing education, as many families cannot afford school fees. The lack of quality education is a further deterrent as schools lack the necessary classroom furniture and quality learning materials. Teachers are often absent and qualified teachers are in short supply.

Sadly, the traditional system of education is not working for the children who have been displaced. The activities of insurgents often stunt their learning. The system does not address the unique learning needs of the children in these settings because it is based on age and not on what they need, regardless of their age. Simply put, the model does not meet their educational needs, and parents will not leave their children in the hands of a system that exposes them to many risks. There has been massive government interest in the issue through the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants, and Internally Displaced Persons. These two bodies are tasked with the mandate, as well as budget, to solve the effects of internal displacement on the learning outcomes of school age children in Northern Nigeria. In spite of this, they have largely been unable to solve the problem.

Gideon’s approach is distinctive in providing access to a new model of education, which recognizes the importance of psychosocial wellbeing, social inclusion, and livelihoods as components of an alternative learning model.

He starts out by mapping the learning needs of the children within the different Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps to determine their level before they had their formal education cut off due to the activities of insurgents. Moving on from this, Gideon and his team set up the learning hubs in the camps, and deploy their Fastrack model, which bundles literacy, digital and entrepreneurial skills designed to equip the children with much-needed relevant skills within the shortest possible time. The instructional materials are designed in both English and Hausa languages for easy comprehension. Furthermore, Gideon deploys a unique talking pen that is coded to the instructional materials and can read out sentences and words in both English and Hausa whenever the students hover over words and sentences in the books. This way, the children’s learning needs are met without having them struggle with pronunciation and comprehension.

Gideon’s work has received major buy-in from the government. He has signed a major partnership with the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants, and Internally Displaced People (IDPs) under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs to scale his replicable alternative education model across eight IDP camps. This partnership guarantees continuous government support for the speedy delivery of his model and unrestricted access to beneficiary populations in all IDP camps. In addition to access, the government, through the agency, supports Gideon’s expansion into more conflict-impacted areas.

As a result of this partnership with the government as well as other funders, he is able to secure the continuous support and buy-in of willing parents. He places these parents in paid roles as teaching aides and assistants. Doing this guarantees them a consistent source of livelihood as well as meaningful employment where they see themselves as co-creators of their children’s future. This is seen as a defense against the parents' greatest fear: their children becoming Boko Haram recruits or, worse still, street beggars. The involvement of the parents has also helped Gideon and his team with the security of their learning hubs as some of the parents help police the detachable structures, ensuring they are not vandalized. Gideon and his team partner with parents and camp residents to source food materials directly from local farms and markets. These food items are kept by camp administrators and prepared by resident chefs who are tasked to make and deliver high-quality meals for the learners. In this manner, Gideon is getting everyone in the driver's seat to take ownership of the outcomes of the children in their respective camps.

Gideon’s entrepreneurial drive has helped him leverage new revenue streams, including the Education Sector Support Diaspora Bond (ESSDB), through his partnership with the government. This guarantees him a steady flow of diaspora support funds backed by the government for his work. He has set up a system where local and international supporters can crowd-fund the Fastrack education of children within the camps. Furthermore, he has also designed a system where well-meaning Nigerians and even non-Nigerians can anonymously opt to fund the Fastrack education of children within the camps through the adopt-a-child arrangement. This is a strategy that Gideon created to help raise funding for the continued education of displaced children in the camps.

So far, Gideon’s idea has been replicated in Nigeria, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is expanding organically through partnerships with other organizations. Over the past four years, Gideon and his team have reached over 18,000 children across 290 Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps and communities across Benue, Borno, Kano, Adamawa, Katsina, Abuja (FCT), and Jigawa states with more than 11,600 children re-integrated into formal schooling. He recently got awarded a $255,000 grant by J-PAL’s Learning for All Initiative (LAI) to scale the impact of his Fastrack program in Nigerian Internally Displaced People’s camps.

As the eldest of six children, Gideon grew up as a privileged child born into royalty in Southwest Nigeria. Due to his parents’ jobs as missionaries, the family was constantly on the move, and because of their travel obligations, they were often absent whenever they couldn’t travel with Gideon and his siblings. This gave Gideon a sense of independence and resilience from a young age.

As a child, he had a blend of academic brilliance with a great deal of empathy for the plight of children who were forced to resort to street begging. He always sought ways to help them. During high school, he discovered many children begging during school hours, and learned they could not afford school due to fees. He immediately swung into action by deploying his scholarship bursary towards enrolling them into school, procuring school uniforms, resources, and books for the children. After doing this, he discovered that the children skipped school shortly after to return to roadside begging. He discovered that the parents of the children, due to their poverty, could not afford to have their children in school rather than on the streets begging. He realized that solving the problem without involving the parents was an exercise in futility. He figured that paying the parents from his scholarship bursary would at least guarantee the children some level of education. He started doing that, and saw it begin to work, changing the educational outcomes of the children who went on to get higher education.

His educational sojourn took him to the United Kingdom for a Master's Degree. There he was greatly inspired by his professors to seek solutions to local challenges. After his studies, he turned down job offers that would have made him stay back in the UK, opting instead to return home to Nigeria, where he could make a meaningful impact.
Since founding AREAi (Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative), Gideon has led diverse teams to design, implement, and monitor high-impact educational interventions that open access to learning and empowerment opportunities for out-of-school children in underserved and hard-to-reach, crisis-affected communities.