Today we celebrate children's day all over this great country Nigeria
and so I write this article in honor of every Nigerian child, residing
somewhere on this planet called Earth. The Bible let's us know that
children are a blessing from the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his
reward. This therefore tells us that children should not be taken for
granted because God himself cares so dearly for them.
Sadly enough
what we see happening in our world today is appalling. Pedophiles
carrying out despicable acts with little children, terrorists
kidnapping, killing, and sexually abusing young girls, drug lords
recruiting young boys as hit men and girls as sex slaves and the list
goes on. Even the teens themselves are not left out. Many are engaging
in premarital sex and getting pregnant. It's not uncommon to see two
kids having a kid these days! How do they take care of the poor child?
And so we are left with broken adults who have no clue as to why God
created them in the first place. This has led to a marked increase in
the number of abortions, suicide cases, drug abuse, and violence just to
name a few. Meanwhile, this was never the plan of God to begin with.
In
every child is a wonderful adult. The way you train up a child will
determine if they grow up to become that great person who impacts their
world for good and leaves their footprints in the sands of time or
become a nuisance to society and probably die like a dog in the street.
We as guardians, parents, mentors, teachers, etc. must take this to
heart and do the right thing. Someone once said that, "It's possible for anyone to hit a home run, but an education gives you more swings and more outs in the game." And the Legendary Nelson Mandela crowned it all when he said, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
I strongly believe in the power of Education to transform a child,
youth and adult from a peasant into a President, from a mud house to the
penthouse, and from no job to a corner office. This education has to be
both formal (at school) and informal (at home) so that the child can
grow up to be a well balanced individual. An intelligent child who lacks
good morals is no different from a thug and like they say charity truly
begins at home. Children must be taught respect people at home and then
go to school to exercise their minds in their to be careers.
Shockingly according to UNICEF literacy figures in Nigeria,
- 40% of Nigerian children aged 6-11 do not attend any primary school with the Northern region recording the lowest school attendance rate in the country, particularly for girls.
- Despite a significant increase in net enrollment rates in recent years, it is estimated that about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school, many do not complete the primary cycle.
- According to current data, 30% of pupils drop out of primary school and only 54% transit to Junior Secondary Schools. Reasons for this low completion rate include child labor, economic hardship and early marriage for girls.
- More than 200,000 new teachers are needed in Nigeria to ensure that there is one primary level teacher for no more than 40 learners.
- Nigeria alone is home to an estimated 10.5 million out-of-school children.
It is for these reasons that the Edu Teens Science Development
Foundation which advocates for STEM and CS training for junior and
secondary school students came up with a program called Code2Schools.
Through our Code2Schools program we are bringing the power of problem
solving and critical thinking to junior and senior secondary school
students between the ages of 9 to 18. We do so through an innovative
approach to education that merges core technical skills in STEM and CS
with entrepreneurial knowledge which will eventually transform these
young minds from job seekers to job creators by the time they get to
University.
So far we have been able to partner with Google on the CS First program
where we teach scratch programming to junior and senior secondary
school students using the Google CS First curriculum. It's been amazing
and the children are loving it. In most of the classes I have personally
taught, I found out that the girls performed far better than the boys
and this made me smile considering that these fields are predominantly
male dominated.
This Summer we will be organizing a Code Camp for
70 kids in order to teach them how to write their own games instead of
merely playing one. We will be teaching Scratch programming, Mobile App
development using MIT App inventor and some aspects of responsive web
development. The kids will work collaboratively in teams and be tasked
to work on real world projects which will build their technical skills.
We believe in these kids and no one can tell if the next Mark
Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs might just be amongst them.
We want you to join us in this movement as we take computer programming (code) from school to school. Follow our campaign on Indiegogo here. Please donate today and help make a child's dream come true. And to all our Nigerian children I say, Happy Children's day!
Arreytambe Tabot is the Founder and CEO of the Edu Teens Science
Development Foundation whose overall mission is to promote Science,
Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) and Computer Science (CS)
through innovative ways that capture learner’s attention, emphasizes
relevance, increases motivation and hence participation in these fields.
He most recently released his first classic, "Planting The Seeds of Change: Preparing tomorrow's harvest with today's seed." He is a geek gone commercial, a public speaker and writer par excellence.
