Group seeks to improve lives of schoolgirls, deepen capacity

IN a bid to improve lives of young girls in schools, provide all round support and transform their lives positively, Goal Nigeria, a subsidiary of Youth Empowerment Foundation ( YEF) is set to empower girls in select communities and secondary schools in Lagos this year. YEF is a youth serving organisation working in Lagos, Ibadan and Abuja.

At its first yearly stakeholders meeting, which had officials of the Lagos State Ministry of Education, principals and other stakeholders in attendance, Monitoring and Evaluation Manager for YEF, Oluwaseunfunmi Arasi, said the group intends to achieve this through weekly interactions, meetings, training for life skills and sporting activities, where they listen to complaints, problems and gets feedback. “We’ll reach 50 girls in each school ( peer leaders) who will in turn reach five girls each. Extra- curricular activities are important for girls to keep them focused and keep their attention on more important things. In the past we used to have girls guides, girls brigades and so on, where girls were taught life skills, but all these had sadly gone. We need to give girls moral values to prevent decadence and transform their lives for good.”

YEF’S Executive Secretary, Iwalola Akin- Jimoh, said: “We need to ensure that within our little space, we do our best to improve girl- child education and well- being because we know when you build the capacity of girls, you build women’s capacity, and when you build women’s capacity, the community is strengthened. Educate a girl and you have educated a whole community.

“The programme, which runs yearly started in 2010 and it teaches girls about being healthy, empowered, sports, life skills like negotiation and leadership, as well as being financially literate. The last skill is very important because we teach them how to save and start a business and make money. We want them to know that even if they’re in the university, they can make money by the side to pay their fees.

“We have reached and imparted over 150, 000 girls so far, but we know we can’t reach everyone, so what we do is, build the capacity of girls we reach so that they can pay it forward. We have our girls in different parts of Nigeria who are now acting as ambassadors. We also have a component that focuses on child protection and Gender Based Violence ( GBV) prevention because we want these girls to be agents of change,” Akin- Jimoh added.

Programme manager, Tolulope Osoba, said she is proud that many of the girls that started the programme while in school are still part of it and now work as interns, volunteers and business owners.

She said: “Many times, we’re given girls that aren’t doing too well at school and after they are trained for a year, we see remarkable changes. The girls that have suffered abuse and assault have been helped to get justice and improve their lives through sponsorship and support. We intend to go into more schools for physical contact, especially through sports, which helps to instill discipline. We look forward to improved partnerships with stakeholders and add more female- only schools to the programme.”