By Philip Yatai

Some adolescent secondary school girls in Kaduna State on Saturday commended the Empowering Women for Excellence Initiative (EWEI), an NGO, for empowering them educationally and equipping them with life skills.

The young girls said in Kaduna during a one-day seminar on Basic Life Skills, that the gesture under the organisation’s Learning Without Limit (LWL) project, would help them to achieve their goals in life.

Jecoliah Audu, 18, of Government Secondary School (GSS), Television, said she was way behind her peers before the LWL intervention, due inaccessibility of reading materials and textbooks, a luxury she does not have.

Audu said that courtesy of the EWEI LWL project, she now owns a tablet computer, which has significantly improved her academic performance due to access to online reading materials and textbooks.

The 18-year-old also said that the project has built her self-confidence, saying that as a girl child sometimes I feel certain things are impossible, until LWL came into my life and changed everything about me.

“The LWL has boosted my morale, changed my mentality to see things from different perspectives and instead of panicking when faced with a problem, I have learned to think critically to look for a solution.

“I want to say a big thank you to EWEI for bringing the project into our lives,” she said.

Also, Favour Macauley, 14, of GSS Gonin Gora, said she was shy and invisible in class before the project, adding however, that the LWL has opened her mind to endless learning possibilities.

“I am a shy person who doesn’t like to talk and performs poorly in class, but the LWL project not only improved my academic performance but brought out the confidence in me,” she said.

Similarly, 16-year-old Blessing Ewa, also a student of GSS Gonin Gora, said that the LWL project has built her self-esteem and made her proud of herself.

“I hated reading before, but now I am always with my tablet computer reading and searching for knowledge,” she said.

Earlier, EWEI Senior Programme Officer, Ms Rachel Ogbonna, explained that the LWL project aims at reducing the digital divide and gaps in access to virtual learning for adolescent girls in Kaduna State.

Ogbonna said that the project provides additional opportunities for young girls to access quality and wholesome education that would improve their performance in specific subject areas.

She explained that the project being implemented in collaboration with Girls Opportunity Alliance, a programme of the Obama Foundation, provides supplementary education for girls in public secondary schools.

She said that the project was empowering 50 adolescent girls from eight public secondary schools within Kaduna since 2021.

She added that the girls were provided with tablet computers to enable them access education materials online and participate in online learning using google class. 

According to her, the project is not only providing supplementary education but empowering young girls with life skills and extra knowledge to cope with everyday challenges being experienced in the world.

“Using UNICEF curriculum on basic life skills, we have been able to teach the benefiting girls, active citizenship, learning and employability skills and today we are taking them through personal empowerment.

“We expect that at the end of the project, the young girls will have life skills learned in achieving their goals in life and live a goal-driven life beyond the classrooms.”

She described the project as a “huge success”, saying that the girls were more vocal and confident, while their creativity and self-awareness have continued to grow.  

“We are happy with how the LWL project is impacting the lives of the beneficiaries and look forward to how they would change the world around them,” she said.  

Also speaking, Hajiya Sa’adatu Mahmud, Director of Gender, Kaduna State Ministry for Human Services and Social Development, commended EWEI for supporting the state to empower secondary school girls.

Mahmud, who was represented by Mrs Lami Usman, Assistant Youth Development Officer, said that the ministry was making efforts to ensure that every girl child has the opportunity to go to school to learn.

She noted that educating the girl child is a huge task that the state government alone cannot do alone, adding that the support from organisations like EWEI would go a long way in empowering young girls. (NAN)