The Kwara State Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project and Olive Community Development Initiative (OCDI), have commenced capacity building programme for 300 persons across the 16 local government areas of the state.
The executive director the of Olive Community Development Initiative, Oluwatoni Adeleke said that the beneficiaries were being tutored on how to tackle some major problems facing adolescent girls.
“The project which is in batches, funded by the World Bank is providing relevant training to the 300 mentors for the adolescent girls across 100 selected schools in Kwara State ,” she said.
Adeleke explained that the project is a stepdown training for mentors in secondary schools to train adolescent girls using the life skill manual that had already been developed.
According to her, the essence of the training is to assist the adolescent girls to tackle challenges of life, adding that ” It was discovered that large numbers of girls don’t always complete their secondary school education because of certain problems that can easily be addressed if they are better enlightened .”
She added,” Statistics have shown that large numbers of girls who enrolled in secondary schools don’t complete their secondary school education at Senior Secondary class because of early child marriage, lack of funds and cultural beliefs”.
She appealed to the principals of the selected schools to provide all the necessary support for the mentors to ensure the realisation of the objectives of the programme.
The executive director of Fulfilling Dreams Foundation and one of the facilitators at the training, Hajia Nimatallahi Oluwatoyin Labaika, said that the mentors were trained on personal hygiene, menstrual hygiene, and basic fundamental human rights, among other areas.
