On April 14, 2014, at 10 AM, 276 young schoolgirls were abducted from their classrooms at Chibok secondary school in Borno state, northeast Nigeria by Boko Haram militants. 57 girls managed to jump out of the trucks kidnapping them into the Sambisa forest bordering Cameroon, Niger, and Chad, but the other 219 girls were lost to the wilderness. After years of government negotiations with the terrorists, 107 girls were released and returned home to their families. 112 remain as hostages, with their whereabouts unknown, and varying reports of death versus forced marriage and sightings in neighboring nations. The parents will not give up hope, and neither will the girls that are back safe. Due to the abduction, none of the girls were able to finish their secondary school education and go to university. The Nigerian government has funded 98 of the 107 girls who were released after negotiations to receive tutoring and their secondary school equivalent WAEC exam, followed by admission at the American University of Nigeria in Yola, Adamawa state, 5 hours to the south of their village. However, 9 girls declined because they fear further attacks from Boko Haram, which literally means ‘say no to western education’. The 57 girls who originally escaped were also funded by the government to receive tutoring and pass their secondary school WAEC exam, but they did not receive funding to go to university. Our mission is to find all 66 girls who are not currently in university and send them to tutoring, their WAEC exam, and finally university for 4 years. This will require thousands of dollars per student, but it is doable. While visiting Chibok to film the 5th anniversary event of the abductions at the school, we were able to meet one of the 9 girls who had declined, but who is now agreeing to go to university to study to become a chemical engineer. She will be the pioneer for these girls, and if successful, the rest will follow in her footsteps and we will help them walk that path to education. We truly believe that the only way to defeat extreme and radical belief systems is to educate the masses and expand their ability to process the world in their own philosophical worldview that cannot be distorted by fundamentalist brainwashing or state sponsored propaganda. Let’s help them get that education they deserve. Western or Eastern, it doesn’t matter. Education is education and we all should have a shot to achieve our potential and be the best that we can be.
