Ayodele Olalere
Good days are here for youths resident in Anthony Village community, Lagos State, due to the ongoing training in computer-based skills.
The free one-month programme, which is being organised by the Anthony Lions Club under its president, Larry James Useba, has received a commendation from parents of the students.
Useba spoke on the motive behind the training and plans by th club to train thousands of youths with the community over the next 10years.
Our club is one of those that make up the Lions Club International. As you are aware, Lions Club International is in over 200 countries in different parts of the world. What we do is that we partner with the government and society to address a need. So, when we identify these needs, we partner with the community that we serve and also government to be able to solve these needs. That is our cardinal focus; our area of vision – diabetes, youth development, child cancer is what we really focus on to be able to serve society.
So, basically what we are doing here at the moment is a need that we identified. Need is about secondary school students, who are deficient in computer knowledge because we noticed that our educational system is computerised in the sense that every exam that they write is being done through the computer-based test and we noticed that they are failing because they don’t have these skills.
After we had identified that need, we went to the various schools in Anthony and spotted these students, who are not from the rich homes that could afford it but students from very low society. So, we brought them together, about fifty of them, from the suburbs in Anthony and trained them.
We are structured, we have the names, the phone numbers of the students and also the parents; so we called the parents to ensure that the students attend the training. So, we follow up on a regular basis to the family of the parents of the children and so far, so good; it is a one month training programme, holding from Monday to Thursday. We start by 10am and end by 12 noon everyday throughout the four days in a week. It is going to be 16 lessons in all. So, basically, that is what we have been able to do and we also look at the curriculum to ensure that it is just structure so that we will be able to address that need. We are talking about Microsoft Office, all the parts of type-setting, accessing the Internet, creating an email and also to be able to access email or Internet, as the case may be.
So, basically these are some of the areas that we felt that we can give back to society and we believe that it is going to be a yearly event because the turnout is very good. So, what we want to do now is to ensure that the world hears our story and is able to partner with us and to see if we can reach out to a larger number of students and touch over 10,000 lives within our community.
So, this is the first time you people are doing such a thing?
Yes, it is the first time.
How many students did you get this time around?
We planned for 40 but we had an overflow. So, we had to make it 50; so 50 students at this point from SS1 upwards.
Where did you get the teachers from?
This is a Computer Training School; they own this building. You can see they have computers all over this place; they write exams here like JAMB because we want the training to be practical based; practical in the sense that it is not just theoretical things but the students will be able to play with the systems and learn what we want them to learn. That is why we chose this place and because they have all the facilities that we require, in terms of skills.
What were the criteria in choosing the students from the several public schools?
What we did was that we got the basic criteria and decided that it would be from SS1 to SS3. We did not go looking for the brightest students or whatever. For now, we chose students within Anthony Village because that is their area of coverage. We can extend it to other locations but it must be within Anthony. Even if you are not schooling within Anthony, you must be resident in Anthony so that during the holidays, you can attend the class and not pay for transportation to far locations.
Basically, all the students are within and around Anthony. The plan is a full month programme so they normally do it around August when the students are on long vacation, which means we need people to come to our aid so that we will be able to touch the lives of these students. So, we are looking at 500 students every year so we can do it session by session.
What are the particular challenges of these students you recognized so far in terms of learning?
For me, what I have noticed so far, I won’t really call it a challenge, but an observation and an improvement on these things. Notes are dictated to the students and there is a projector. All we needed to do next was to print out a handout for the curriculum. We felt that the dictation is equally helping them so that they can copy. What we will be doing by next year is an improvement to ensure that the handout is printed and also attached to the structure.
But basically, they are coping. We are also going to have our exams at the end of the training for the students and there is likely to be a certificate based on the fact that we don’t want to repeat the training next year for the same students. We have a record of students and keep it in our archive.
What have been the reaction of parents to this training?
Parents are very impressed. We have a massive turnout of students every day, marking register and our principle is that if you miss two classes, you are out of the training. There were about 60 or 70 of them at the beginning but some were not serious with the training so we pruned them to about 50. Our system is very strict; we had to introduce the exam and also the certificate.
So far, how has it been?
It’s been successful, we have done two weeks, this is the third week then we will go to the finals. The finals is going to be next week.
How were you able to get funding for this programme?
Our sponsors are the Anthony Village Life Fountain Hospital; the medical director, Dr. Agboola, is one of our sponsors. Then we have Engineer Iliak, he is also the CEO of Precise Financial System and he was very supportive as well.
Are they all Lion Club members?
No, they are not all Lion Club members. We approached some and told them our needs and they supported.
