By Oluwaseyi Oduneye-Ogunwomoju
Youth Employment Foundation (YEF), an NGO, on Thursday said it had started training 1300 girls in 13 secondary schools in Ibadan in vocational and life skills to enhance positive changes among youths.
Mrs Iwalola Akin- Jimoh, YET Executive Secretary, disclosed this at a one-day stakeholders meeting for education stakeholders in Oyo State.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Standard Chartered Bank is partnering with YEF on the programme as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility.
The aim of the programme is to train girls and in each school; we train 100 girls who now reach out to 10 girls each over a period of 9 months on life skills.
They are also trained on different vocations, like hairdressing, tailoring, baking and information technology.
We want everybody to realise that within your little space, you can do a lot to move the country forward, we dont have to be dependent on government, Jimoh said.
According to her, the NGO have different programmes in its five core areas of health, education, sports for development, child for protection and livelihoods.
What we want is a situation where young people are empowered, not only empowered in term of their academics but also empowered to earn some income, empowered to know that your community is your immediate space you can make a change, she said.
Mrs Aderonke Adeleke, YET Coordinator at Onireke High School, said that the laudable programme had been in existence in her school for four years.
Adeleke said that yearly, new girls were recruited and trained on life skills and life goals.
Part of the skills are budgeting, decision making, goal setting among others. I particularly like training on gender-based violence which teaches how girls can cope with such.
The programme has impacted a lot in the lives of the children, at least we see changes in the lives of the children. The way they think and carry themselves.
The girls train others as they have been trained and it has a far-reaching effect on the populace generally, she said.
She added that the programme should be given more funding and encouragement by incorporating it in the normal school curriculum.
Many schools are challenged with timing, giving them adequate time to train the children, so it wont clash with the normal school activities.
If the government, Ministry of Education in particular, could incorporate them into the curriculum maybe after examination, since we normally have two weeks after examination that could be used for YEF to train the students.
Also Ill like to see a programme that would include the boys because if we train the girls to be good and all rounded and the boys are found wanting, these girls will end up with such boys.
They should look into the possibility of training the boys in some particular areas so we can have a balanced environment, she said. (NAN)
Source: NAN News