World Bank Assisted Project Targets Nomad Adolescent Girls

The Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) Project, a World Bank-assisted initiative, says it will provide another school re-enrollment opportunity to nomadic adolescent girl-dropouts in Bauchi State.

To achieve the desired results, AGILE Project cemented a collaboration with the Bauchi State Agency for Nomadic Education (BASANE) under the ‘second chance education’ component of the project.

Bauchi State AGILE Project coordinator, Dr Jamila Dahiru disclosed this during an advocacy visit to the management of BASANE.

Dr Jamila said Bauchi, being one of the eleven additional funding states under the project, would be implementing the ‘second chance’ component meant for adolescent girls who left school due to one reason or the other and are willing to re-enroll to complete their education.

She said the visit was to intimate the agency about the project and their role as key implementers considering various programmes being run that fall under the purview of the project including creating accessible, safe and enabling learning space for girls and boys, especially for dropouts between the ages of 10 and 20.

The project coordinator said AGILE Project will last for five years, noting that part of its mandate is to build schools, provide support in the form of conditional cash transfers to financially disadvantaged girls, digital and life skills, hygiene and reproductive health, among others, for them to become productive members of the society.

“When we talk about CCT, we’re talking of these adolescent girls who could not go to school because they can’t afford it, due to financial inadequacies. So, we support them with a little token just to motivate them to go to school. 

“We’re also targeting digital skills, life skills and others that would help them improve their capacity and be important members of society,” she said.

Secretary, Bauchi State Agency for Nomadic Education (BASANE), Musa Ibrahim Ardo said the agency boasts of over 500 nomadic schools with over 11,000 pupils spread across all the twenty local government areas of the state and called for the recruitment of more teachers to bridge teacher-pupils gap.

“AGILE Project is coming up and we know it will go a long way in solving the problems of infrastructure and inadequate teachers,” Ardo said.