By Hassan Ibrahim Conteh
Advocacy Network (KAN) on Tuesday commenced two-day leadership training for youths and child activists in the Western Area.
The training, being held at the conference hall of the child protection organization Don Bosco Fambul, in Freetown, is geared towards building confidence in public speaking and providing advocacy skills among children and youths in the country. The participants will be trained on various skills on how to develop annual work plans, budget and public etiquette.
“There are a lot of passionate young people but many of them usually lack the technical know- how,” said Edmond Alim B. Fornah, Executive Director and founder of KAN. Fornah said his oganization was committed to ensuring that young people, especially children, were capacitated in order to enable them to take leadership roles in the country.
KAN is one of the leading child protection advocacy groups in the country. The training is sponsored by the World Bank, Don Bosco Fambul and the One Family People.
KAN are partners with Save the Children, Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs, and many other children welfare related organizations.
The organization has targeted 15 schools in the west end of Freetown as part of its leadership skills training and empowerment.
Paulina H. Bangura, national president of Children’s Forum Network (CFN), said children needed proper counseling on the selection of specialized courses in their different schools before going to various tertiary institutions.
“There should be ‘career talk programs’ in almost all of the schools across the country,” she said in a statement as part of the official opening ceremony.
CFN is also a child-led organization advocating on behalf of less privilege children across the country. It serves as a national force for the children of Sierra Leone. In 2015, it conducted a survey on career counseling and assessment on the state of libraries operating in the country. On that survey, they found out that about 60% of students in the University of Sierra Leone were not given any proper counseling on how to choose their area of study. It also found that about 85% of the schools in the country were without libraries, while 13.2% of those having libraries lack relevant books and researchable materials.
Ms Bangura said while children and youths need empowerment, such empowerment should not only be limited to mentorship programs and career orientation.
She also called on children to imbibe the culture of reading in all the schools across the country.
“If we initiate such programs in schools, it will empower young people to choose the career they have passion for and it will create more job opportunities among young people,” she said.
She added: “Only few pupils and students make use of the Sierra Leone Library Board or even aware of its mandate. This has also led to the poor performance of pupils in public exams.
Paulina believes that if young people are empowered and capacitated, Sierra leone will be guaranteed of a brighter future with productive young people. She said the issues of rape, teenage pregnancy, early marriage and drug abuse would be a thing of the past, if they are empowered.
(C) Politico 30/03/16
