By Joseph Erunke, ABUJA

A total of 168,946 girls in selected public schools across the country were empowered in various aspects of life through the Goal Project of the Youth Empowerment Foundation,YEF, in the past 14 years .

The Standard Chartered Bank sponsored project which was initiated in 2010, according to the Executive Secretary of YEF,Iwalola Akin-Jimoh, is a reproductive health, life skills, and sports (football and martial arts) development project for young girls in selected public secondary schools in Ibadan, Abuja, and Lagos.

Speaking at the annual Goal project stakeholders meeting,in Abuja,Iwalola Akin-Jimoh explained that the Goal project equally facilitated several school-based projects such as lab equipment and library book donations, renovation of sick bays, construction of water points, distribution of face masks, hand sanitizers, and scholarships.

The event was a close-out ceremony of the project which lasted 14 years and saw YEF working with young people in Southwest and North Central Nigeria on education, health, sports for development, secure livelihood, and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, W.A.S.H.

While describing YEF as a youth-focused non-governmental, not-for-profit organization in Nigeria with focus for youth to live in a world of abundant resources; a world where innate potential is harnessed for positive self-development,she disclosed that the foundation’s Goal Project which about the girl-child in Nigeria cost Chartered Bank over $500,000.

She explained that,”In its 14 years of existence in Nigeria, running simultaneously in three cities; Lagos, Ibadan and Abuja, the Goal Project has touched the lives of 168,946 girls across public schools.

“It has given them vocational skills and training in sports like football and taekwondo while making them advocates against gender-based abuse and violence as well as financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills,”she said.

She explained:”YEF is a youth serving organisation in Nigeria, working in various parts of the country to ensure that young people have access to capacity building and economic empowerment opportunities,so that they can continue to develop their communities and Nigeria as a whole.

“We are working in about five key areas-repreductive issues;life issues which is just a way of talking about empowerment where we create entrepreneurship opportunities,train young people in different locations to give them capital and do some things around their employability which is to give young people still in school opportunity to learn more about their careers of choice by placing them in different offices that are related to the careers that they want to pursue .

“For example, somebody that wants to study Law is placed on a law firm and somebody that wants to study Medicine is placed in a hospital so that they can learn more about the vocation that they want to.

“We also do sports for development activities,so we focus on football and taekwondo, particularly for young girls and we use it to teach academic excellence,we use it to teach time management and we use it to teach self esteem and self confidence and life skills. So,with the taekwondo,what we are focusing is to extensively work on gender based violence to prevent it and how young girls can defend themselves and how they can have confidence anywhere they go and be open to being alert in case of danger. Those are some of the things that we do.”

While also explaining that the project had assisted developing the leadership capabilities of the girls to become great citizens of the country anywhere they find themselves,she tasked the project’s contact persons to continue the projects on their own,given that resources were already available.

She said:”Goal clubs are already established in the schools. We want to harmonised the resources we have and ride on the structures already existing so that the project continues.

The Stakeholders’ meeting is on annual basis to review the success of a project called GOAL.

“We bring together our contact persons such as the principals and various government agencies to learn about what we have done over the years and look at the challenges we have .

“GOAL has four modules under the training, Be healthy which talks about their body, menstruation and for them to know more about the physiology of a woman.

“Be yourself talks about knowing about the type of persons they are and have an understanding about how they can improve their self-esteem and self-confidence.

“Be empowered talks about their rights and their responsibilities not only to themselves but also to their parents and the community and ‘Be money’ talks about their savings, needs and wants.”