Initiative for Justice and Equitable Education for Development

This project will solve the problem of lack of access to ICT skills, youth unemployment and curb the rate of gender-based violence and child abuse in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The project will be cited in three rural communities, Uko Akpan, Ibaka, and Oron in Akwa Ibom. The three communities have many things in common. They are coastal villages and their major occupations are fishing and subsistent farming. The reliance on seafood trade as the major source of income has its own challenges to family integration, wellness and the daily sustenance. Many married men spend months in the high sea, leaving their wives, and in many cases, their old grandmothers to cater for the children. This exposes many children to abuse of different kinds and also trafficking.

Although Akwa Ibom State is a major producer of crude oil and other hydrocarbons, and Oron is the most oil-producing community in Akwa Ibom, the communities are politically neglected. Ibaka, one of the communities where the ICT centre would be located has a Deep Seaport. In spite of that, the rate of poverty remains very high and there is no standard school in the whole area. Basic social amenities, including electricity and potable water are also non-existent. Youth unemployment is equally high, which not only has worsened the standard of living but also move the youth to engage in crimes, including child labour, child trafficking, sexual and gender-based violence. Generally, Akwa Ibom State constantly make headline for human trafficking (cf. https://www.nairaland.com/62235/akwa-ibom and https://youtube.com/watch?v=9itkdhxBpKM&si=Ievy8oVAEfeg9Wyf

The computer centres will enable the children to be engaged after school and also equip them with ICT skills needed in the current technologically-driven society. Although the Nigeria university qualifying examination, UTME uses computer-based (CBT) tests, many young people in the rural areas lack access to computers. For many of these students, they never get to know the computer skills until the time for examination. This year, 2024, the West African Examination Council also announced a migration to CBT test for its examination. With no concrete plan for the huge number of students in rural areas like the communities mentioned above, their future is bleak because they lack ICT skills. This project will equip them with the needed skills to compete with their fellows in the cities and around the world. 

We will open three ICT centres in the three selected villages. A sub-monitoring office would be cited in Oron and the major monitoring office in Lagos. With the help of six teachers in the rural communities, local graduates would be recruited as trainers. Through the monitoring offices, online ICT class would be used to train local ICT trainers from the rural environment. Through these, the young people would be gainfully employed by training in-school and out-of-school students and young people. We will start the fundamentals of computer application before moving to more complex applications. For a start, we will target 50 children and young people in each centre. With time and available resources, we will increase the number.

The target population are all young people between the ages of 10-18. In the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index Report, while the Nigerian unemployment and underemployment rates are 33.3% and 22.8% respectively those of Akwa Ibom State are 51% and 16.7%, making the former higher than the national average (p. 8). According to the report, close to six million children aged 0-17 lives in multidimensional poverty (p. 46), 26% of children aged 10 years and above are deprived of education attainment (p. 66) and 10.3% all school-aged children (6–15) are poor and out of school (p. 150).

This project will prepare young people to rise beyond the poverty level in which their parents and caregivers live. It will empower them with computer literacy so that they will not be left behind in the mainstream education. A few young people will be employed and different empowerment programs and initiatives will be delivered online. Through these, they will get connected to the world outside the environment. There will also be regular training on social and environmental issues including child abuse, eco-friendly farming and fishing practices among others. As this is a pilot initiatives, other initiatives would be added as needs arise.

We have diverse team members experienced community interventions. The head of the team and some of our team live in Lagos State. They will work together to coordinate the activities in the centres and incorporate different ICT professionals to training programs. A member of the team also lives in Oron, Akwa Ibom State where she works as the head of a secondary school. She will be instrumental to setting up and coordinating the activities at the local level.

We selected the prototype because our organisation is relatively new. However, some of our teams and volunteers have divergent experiences working in rural communities with school children across geographical units in Nigeria. Our experiences have provided us with enough evidence on the educational challenges facing a vast number of rural school children in Nigeria. Therefore, while this is a prototype initiative, it is also based on many years of experience in rural education and community engagements. We are confident that this novel initiative will be extended to many other rural communities. 

We need financial and personnel supports  to open the ICT centres. Through monetary support, we would be able to provide ICT facilities for our learners. We also need mentorship, training and support from experts in ICT and culturally-responsive social workers so that we could learn from their pool of experiences and initiatives. By connecting our learners with mentors and experts from different countries and across geographical units, we hope to expose them to the pluriversal world, widen their horizon and expose them to the world outside their local communities. 

A domesticated online classroom which targets young people in very remote villages is indeed an uncommon initiative in Nigeria. While some communities have computer centres run by private individuals, these are often expensive and therefore, beyond the reach of poor children. Our project however, targets poor children and we hope to open the door to every child that wants to learn. Moreover, networking among the centres and connecting them to trainers both within and outside Nigeria are innovative methods we hope would give them a lot of motivation to persevere in the training program

We expect that our solution will have a impact on the problem because we have mapped out stages for our project. First, we will start with the fundamentals of computer application using rural trainers. The local trainers will use the children's local language so that those who are not competent in English language will not feel intimi. Moreover, the local trainers will receive constant professional support to make them efficient. In summary, our approach will be localised but with a global focus. 

Young people who participate in this project willbhave periodic practical assessments. Below are some of the indicators that will help us measure the impact of our interventions:

1. Young people aged 0-18 will have minimum ICT skills including the use of basic softwares.

2. They will be able use the  Microsoft word to type as a minimum speed.

3. They can do online tests both objective and theory-based tests.

4. They can participate in online classes and meetings, access course materials, submit assignments and other online-based networking activities. They can also send and receive emails.

5. At an advanced level, they can do several computer-related activities including developing softwares. 

The core technologies for our project are computers, printers, Internet and solar energy. 

At the moment,  we have a team of 8 people 

Full-time: 5

Part-time: 3

We have been working on our solution for five years. However, due to the long process involved in registering our organisation, it only got an official recognition in 2023.

Our organisation is open to anyone who shares our vision of equitable education for all children. Our team, currently is made up of three males and five females across different countries. We also support children irrespective of their identities.

As a starter organisation, our msjor focus is to help children in rural areas to have access to equitable educational opportunities. Wevhopebto keep learning in the process.

We hope that after training the first set of students and young people, we would set up more training centres in the towns and cities. Those in the urban areas would pay affordable fees to help up develop our business and pilot the activities of the centres.