By Ibrahim Bello
An NGO, the Women and Youth Initiative for Moral Awareness (WAYMA), on Thursday trained 34 teachers on vocational skills and efficient teaching ethics in Kebbi State.
WAYMA in partnership with Skills Outside School Foundation (SOSF), an NGO, organised the training for 24 teachers and 10 guidance and counseling personnel.
The National Coordinator of WAYMA in Nigeria, Garba Hassan, said the programme was aimed at training the teachers to step down to the students in order to enhance academic performance and ensure self reliance.
Hassan spoke at the closing of the three-day training on Thursday in Birnin Kebbi.
“With the training of teachers and cascading same to students, the students will have a way and guide within the school to become self-reliant,” he said.
According to him, it is the first time the NGOs are organising the programme in the state.
Earlier, Hajiya Halima Ibrahim-Abba, the SOSF Board Chairperson, said that the annual event was to improve teacher/trainers’ capacity to inspire efficient teaching ethics and professionalism in the teaching profession.
“This is in addition to effectively deploying the SOSF bridge skills and career club in 12 government secondary schools across Birnin Kebbi and Jega local government areas.
“This will be a very helpful training for all stakeholders.
“The SOSF Bridge programme exposes youths in secondary schools through workshops deployed by trained school teachers/trainers and opportunities through partners and mentors to build them on.
“They will be trained on life skills, career awareness and skills development, academic skills, and technical, vocational, as well as enterprise skills,” Ibrahim-Abba said.
She explained the decision to train the teachers was borne out of the high level of unemployment and economic issues in the country.
According to her, the foundation helps to address the issues of unemployment and employability, by making sure the people get the right type of education that can enable them to become entrepreneurs or work for others.
“We have been working with volunteer trainers over the last seven to eight years, and we have realised that the focus should be on teachers, because they are trained to deliver curriculums.
“They are the ones who have the understanding on how to manage classrooms, and they see what the young people are going through.
“They are the type of people who have the capability to really understand some of the difficulties that are occurring in our today’s society.
“We are thereby ensuring that when they are trained, they will, in turn, step down the training to students either through their subjects or clubs that we set up,” she said.
Ibrahim-Abba added that the NGO had been working in FCT and 15 other states in the country for a long time.
According to her, the foundation is currently focusing more on the northwest zone basically because of the challenges in that part of the country.
She said Kebbi State was chosen as the start off state by the the NGO because it had the highest rate of out-of-school children in the country.
“Kebbi is an interesting state to start with given the fact that it has the highest rate of out-of-school children in Nigeria, among other things.
“That discrepancy is what put us here in addition to the wonderful support we have from our partners in the state,” the chairperson said.
Speaking on behalf of the participants, Mr Ifeanyi Nwemeh, from the Haliru Abdu Secondary School, Jega, said that the training had equipped them on soap-making, and interpretation of words, among others.
“We are going to do combined job to cascade the training to the students for the development of our students and the state,” he said.
Nwemeh commended the NGOs for the training and urged the state government to ensure the sustenance of the programme for teachers and students to not only become self-reliant, but employers of labour. (NAN)
