By Gami Tadanyigbe
The Non-Governmental Association for Literacy Support Service (NOGALSS) and National Commission for UNESCO (NATCOM-UNESCO) are set to collaborate on accelerated second chance education.
They also agreed to partner on elimination of Gender Based Violence (GBV) among women and girls.
According to them, second chance education means a programme targeted to persons above an age who have left the school system or never attended.
The parties made the commitment on Tuesday during an advocacy visit to Mr Lateef Olagunju, NATCOM-UNESCO led by Mr Noah Emmanuel, President of NOGALSS on the Spotlight Initiative project Activity 4:2:17 in Abuja.
Emmanuel, admitted that he came with his team to NATCOM-UNESCO to foster a partnership with people of similar work interest.
He said this was to provide second chance education and livelihood skills for out-of-school girls and women facing intersecting marginalisation in Adamawa, Ebonyi and FCT.
He also added that the spotlight initiative which was a Global multi-year partnership between the European Union and the United Nations targeted the empowerment of 10,000 women and girls.
“The main objective of the project is to promote the empowerment of women and girls in marginalised communities for resilience, strengthening and self-actualisation through education along with effective advocacy for eliminating GBV.
“This target audience, women and girls need to be empowered to become responsible citizens with access to right information, resist violence and any form of abuse or manipulation.
“NOGALSS is engaged in the project in FCT, Ebonyi and Adamawa states and it’s mandated to provide for the implementation of Non-Formal component of the project.
“The spotlight programme will not only provide a multisetoral protection for women and girl-child but good economic support to sustain them.
“In view of the commission’s key roles as the interface in the implementation of UNESCO initiatives in Nigeria, NOGALSS therefore, kindly request that the commission creates visibility for the spotlight initiative through its networks.”
Emmanuel also urged the commission to support the sustainability and the scale-up in other states of the federation through strong representation to government as the project related to the achievement of SDGs 4.5 and 5.3.
He further called on the commission to assist NOGALSS to facilitate projects from international organisations through its network among others.
Mr Lateef Olagunju, Secretary-General NATCOM-UNESCO, commended NOGALSS for the initiative and the dogedness in eliminating illiteracy and assured them of his commitment to the course.
According to Olagunju, NOGALSS is one of the principal collaborating agencies with NATCOM-UNESCO and the relationship will be strengthened to tackle GBV and marginalisation among women and girls.
On behalf of NATCOM-UNESCO, we will do everything possible to ensure that we give you a backup for this very initiative and also use our network as much as possible to promote this very programme.
“So feel free to knock on the doors of NATCOM-UNESCO anytime and make your request.
“The spotlight initiative is further addressing one of the priority areas, priority Africa and also girls and women,
“UNESCO places high premium on this and that is why for us, we will throw all our weight behind this very programme towards ensuring the girls and women are empowered.”
Olagunju further explained that although scaling up programmes might be a challenge in Nigeria because most programmes stopped at the pilot level but he would work with NOGALSS on opportunities to scale up and sustain the programme.
