United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Monday called on government to engage the graduants of second chance education.
The UNESCO South-east coordinator, spotlight Initiative, Dr Stephen Onyekwere stated this during the graduation of 26,000 participants in Spotlight second chance education program at Tehilar Center, International market, Abakaliki.
He noted that while the first phase of the programme was coming to an end, the second phase would start by June 2021.
“The end of Spotlight phase one should not be an end to spotlight programme in the state, and how do we appeal to sustain this programme, the facilitators that are teaching this learners in the state, sir we appeal to you that we also put them into our budget so that they can continue to provide necessary supervision, the facilitation for these learners to be able to continue with their learning.
“What they have just received is what is called basic literacy, we have also post literacy, this is just the beginning as we don’t want them to stop here but to go to the higher level.
“Let me also use this opportunity to tell us that phase two is coming, phase one is technically ending. We do expect that by June this year all things being equal phase two will kick off and when we start we will address some key challenges we have identified.
“Under the phase one we have being receiving complains from states that they were not given the grant for them to be able to implement directly , such things will be considered in phase two so that when we are funding the state will receive some fund, our CSOs will received some fund for the two CSO and government to work together for us to be able to achieve the purpose.
“Another area we will want to emphasize is in vocational skills, the argument is after literacy what next, so after you can read and write it might of necessity not be useful to you today.
So we are going to integrate vocational skill where the learners will not only learn how to read and write but have another practical still to improve their social economic well-being” .
The state Commissioner for Education, Dr. Onyebuchi Chima in a remark said the spotlight initiative programme fits into the state empowerment programme, asking that men be integrated into it.
” Ebonyi state is one the states we know that have a lot of out of school children, most of these children are boys scattered all over the federation not only girls, trading,hawking, doing all kinds of menial jobs.
“This kind of programme should target them to expand it to include “education today for all” in other to help us in what we are doing in this state to catch those of them that are out of school and feel old to go back to school to study. That is why today we are happy to thank the World Bank that Ebonyi state is a BESDA state and we are ready to work with other international organisations to improve boys and girls education”.
One of the graduants, Mrs Ogboji Celestina, a 40-years-old farmer and mother of four from Echara community, Ezza South local government area appreciate UNESCO spotlight for empowering her.
“I am so happy today to be among the people graduating from Primary six. Before I don’t know how to read and write, but now if you ask my name i will write it for you”.
