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NGO to engage youths on productive Internet surfing, teachers’ capacity building

By Alemma-Ozioruva Aliu, Benin City
30 March 2017   |   3:48 am
A United States of America based non-governmental organisation, Grace Foundation has concluded plan to train young people on productive internet surfing and improved capacity for teachers.

A United States of America based non-governmental organisation, Grace Foundation has concluded plan to train young people on productive internet surfing and improved capacity for teachers.

The training is planned in collaboration with the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools (ASUSS) and states Universal Basic Education Boards for primary school teachers.

Founder of the Foundation, Dr Joan Osa Oviawe stated this at the launching of the Nigerian branch of the Foundation with headquarter in Benin City where she said the Foundation was interested in helping to break the cycle of poverty in Nigeria “and helping people to help themselves. Our programme area include education workforce training and support of women”

Oviawe said the Foundation would offer free professional development training to public primary and secondary school teachers. “We are starting a pilot programme on that in Edo state for one year to see how it works and then expand it to other parts of Nigeria.

“We are also in talks with ASUSS to work with them to provide supplemental professional training to public secondary school teachers in Edo, we are also talking with SUBEB to provide training for primary school teachers,” he explained.

She said the other programme is targeted towards young people who are unemployed or under employed. She added: “We are providing career counselling. A lot of them graduate or are in school and they don’t know what they are going to do through our career-coaching programme, we provide these services free of charge. We want to also use technology to reach out to them through the provision of online resources. We find that too many of our young people are online but they are not there for meaningful purpose they are getting into trouble when they can harness all the resources in the internet for good use so we are creating an online resource centre to help find employment opportunities, grants, admissions and others because out of ignorance, many of our young ones are trekking to get abroad whereas if they have the brains, all they need is to find schools that will give them grants or scholarships to come and study.”

On funding, she said it is multi-prong approach through individual donations, grant writing, consulting arm that provides consulting services and others.

In his contribution at the event, former Chief Whip of the House of Representatives, Samson Osagie said there was need to encourage such NGOs because of their ability to reach the down-troden in the society.

He said with proper encouragement and coordination, NGOs can be used by the government to break the cycle of poverty, especially in rural communities.

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