As Delta State’s pupils filed back into class for a new academic session, a coalition of Rotary clubs decided the moment called for more than well-wishes. On Monday, 21 September 2026, four clubs teamed up with a local NGO to put notebooks and writing materials into the hands of pupils and students across selected primary and secondary schools in Sapele, then planted trees in the schoolyard for good measure.
The drive was the work of the Rotary Club of Sapele Gateway, Rotary Club of Sapele City Centre, Rotary Club of Sapele GRA and the Rotaract Club of Sapele Metro, operating under Rotary International District 9141, in partnership with the Bright Mind Development Initiative. They branded it a two-pronged “Back to School” project, one arm aimed at basic education and literacy, the other at environmental sustainability.
Pupils of Abbott Primary School, Olympia, and students of Gana Mixed Secondary School, Oton, were the direct beneficiaries. The handover drew Rotarians past and present, Rotaractors and representatives of the partnering NGO to the two campuses.
The timing was deliberate. Rotary International marks September as its month for Basic Education and Literacy, and the project chair and team leader, Rotarian Happy Tosan Mene, a past president of the Rotary Club of Sapele Gateway, said the goal was simply to steady children at the start of the term with the materials they need to learn. Mene was blunt about why partnerships like this matter: government, he noted, cannot meet every need on its own, which leaves room, and responsibility, for organisations and individuals to step in.
The messaging to the students leaned hard on the value of staying in school. Club presidents Vivian Ogbemi Galani (Sapele Gateway), Vivian Ekwemgbe (Sapele GRA) and Anyanwu Chiamaka Elizabeth (Rotaract Sapele Metro), alongside Roseline Olose, who represented Bright Mind Development Initiative chief executive Bright Serorie Egigba, urged the young beneficiaries to take their studies seriously. Their pointed refrain, that “education is not scam,” pushed back against a growing scepticism among some young Nigerians about whether schooling still pays off.
Receiving the visitors, Abbott Primary headmistress Igedebor Justina and Gana Mixed Secondary vice principal for administration Dr Mrs Iheakanwa Julie welcomed the support, saying the materials would ease a real barrier for families who struggle to afford basic supplies.
What lifts this above a routine giveaway is the second prong. By planting trees at Abbott Primary as part of the same exercise, the organisers folded climate awareness into an education drive, teaching pupils that the classroom and the environment around it are part of the same future. It is a small, local model of the kind of joined-up thinking that larger development programmes often talk about and rarely execute at the school gate.
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