General News
THE Center For Peace Advancement in Nigeria (CEPAN), an NGO, says it is engaging 200 children and youths in some communities in Plateau, on inculcating peace values.
The Executive Director of CEPAN, Rev Samuel Gorro, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Friday in Jos.
Gorro said the training was part of efforts to foster peaceful coexistence amongst different groups in the state.
According to him, the training is in partnership with British Council and Agents for Citizen-Driven Transformation, and funded by the European Union.
He said that the organisation was working with children and youths in four communities in Jos North Local Government Area (LGA), on a six months project titled; “Strengthening the culture of peace”, which began in August.
“We are working with children from ages 10 to 17, and youths from ages 18 to 30, in Angwan Jarawa community, Farin Gada in Naraguta, Bauchi Road and Angwan Rukuba.
“We conducted a training on peace building and de-radicalisation, and on drugs therapy and counselling.
“We want to inculcate peace values in them and help them develop life skills so they can grow with confidence, knowing what they want to do in life.
“We discovered that many of them are being involved in criminal activities such as substance abuse and stealing.
“We also want to see how we can groom them to be patriotic citizens; our focus has always been religious and community leaders, women and youth, with little emphasis on children,“ Gorro said.
He said the training would empower them to resist being used as tools of perpetrating violence in the society, and falling victims of human trafficking with false promises of a better future outside their communities.
Gorro said the organisation was also working in some conflict communities to address the involvement of teenage girls in commercial sex, by empowering them with vocational skills.
“We discovered that teenage girls are involved in indiscriminate sex to fend for themselves, and so they get involved with gangs and begin to take drugs and abscond from their homes.
“We came out with a programme called the G-10 transformation, which is in partnership with Self Help Activation Responsibility Empowerment (SHARE), a German foundation to transform 10 teenage girls.
“We had an agreement to pay for their training.
“Those who wished to go back to school were sponsored to do that, while those who wanted to learn a trade were attached to master trainers, so far we have 26 beneficiaries,“ he said. (NAN)
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Tags: Center For Peace Advancement in Nigeria Rev Samuel Gorro
