A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Additional Plus Sports and Education Initiative (APSE), on Wednesday said it would empower not less than 60 out-of-school girls, women and physically-challenged through sports.
The Executive Director of APSE, Oluwaseun Narwoh, while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos, bemoaned the high rate of out-of-school girls in the country.
Narwoh, who spoke on the sidelines of the organisation’s programme aimed at empowering young girls, women and the physically-challenged, urged for an urgent redress.
APSE is a non-profit organisation with the objectives of empowering young girls and women, including those with disabilities.
“APSE shall be empowering 60 participants and this is specifically for young people between ages 6 and 11 in the Mowe area of Ogun, and this empowerment is hinged on harnessing hidden potential through sports and education.
“We also want to create communal unity through leisure experience which will serve as an empowerment scheme towards the discovery and nurturing of identified talents for a more gratifying future.
“It will be an avenue for the participants to be gainfully involved and engaged at their formative stage, since sports is a laboratory for talent and character-building necessary for any national advancement,’’ the APSE executive director said.
She added that the scheme was for the exclusive intention of promoting diversity and social justice through the APSE Academy.
Narwoh then disclosed that APSE would on Saturday hold a programme tagged “Awaken the Giant 1.0 Challenge’’ at the Eminent Kids Montessori School in Mowe.
She said the organisation’s pet project was a start-up innovation programme for the development of young girls through the introduction of sports and Reading Club at the grassroots across Nigeria.
“The management of APSE is launching the programme in Mowe in partnership with Eminent Kids Montessori School owing to the fact that there is no existence of sports there presently.
“We understand that, worldwide, sports is an unrivaled tool that transcends all geographical barriers, age, ethnicity and social status.
“The idea was borne out of the need to promote mass participation of young girls in sports and education, since sports provides hope where there seems to be none.
“Also, education provides knowledge which is power,’’ Narwoh said.
She said the vision of the NGO was to improve the orientation of girls on how they could sustain their education alongside their engagement in sports activities.
“The vision of the clinic is to establish and sustain sports and reading club in local communities, and the mission is a continuous process of grooming participants in various sports.
“So, we have sports such as table tennis, basketball, scrabble, football and athletics, with the aim of grooming the young ones to stardom through an exposure to state, national and global opportunities.
“Having attended the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime workshop organised for civil society organisations (CSOs) in Nigeria, the resource materials shared on Doha Declaration on Education for Justice (E4J) Initiative tools shall be used in sustaining the reading club.
“Along the line, this will help in promoting the culture of lawfulness amongst young people in Nigeria,” the APSE official said.(NAN)
, Additional Plus Sports and Education Initiative (APSE), on Wednesday said it would empower not less than 60 out-of-school girls, women and physically-challenged through sports.){kind=link}