Springs Aid Foundation, a Non Governmental Organisation, has introduced digital literacy in its ‘Boko Na Light’ alternate school programme for indigent children in Bwari Area Council of the FCT.
Mr Kenneth Chima, the Founder and President of the Foundation, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday, in Abuja, said digital literacy was a necessity for all children.
He explained that the NGO’s education programme was called ‘Boko Na Light’ means Education is light.
“We want to change the narrative of Boko Haram which condemned Western Education, by targeting indigent out-of -school children.
“According to UNICEF, over 10.5 million children in Nigeria were out of school; and the World Bank reported sometimes ago that over 90 million Nigerians were living below the poverty line.
“This is an ugly trend that contributed and was still contributing to the high rate of out-of-school children in our country. Therefore, ‘Boko Na Light’ aimed at reducing the rate.
“We have been running this programme for the past two years in the area of basic literacy with numerical ability, but now we are bringing in digital literacy,” Chima said.
According.to him, the essence was to familiarise the children with the digital world, eradicate their phobia of digital devices and build their capacity for digital interactions.
He also said it was to spark up their interest in the digital world and nurture their creativity to enhance positive innovations that would attract global attention.
Chima said that in as much as the Foundation would want to expand the programme and provide the children with free digital devices, lack of funds was hampering the intention.
“Most.of the laptops and phones you see the children using here today are from volunteers, but when we have funds, we would provide digital gadgets to each and every one of them.
“Thus, we call on the Federal, state, local governments and other good spirited individuals and organisations to please, support us in this programme.
“This is because, there are many children from.poor and vulnerable households in our society that cannot afford to go to school, and our programme is free and we also feed them,” Chima said.
Similarly, Mr Nuhu Ishiaka, the Senior Programme Officer of the Foundation, said digital education was critical, because, according to him, the world was changing very fast toward digitalisation.
“The Boko Haram insurgency was centred on an ideology that western education is forbidden and over ten years, we are still battling with it.
“It is only through an educated mind and ideology, including digital capability, that you can actually bend and manage things easily.
“We started with literacy, numerical capacity development, and now, we see the need for them to understand the digital world, thus, we moved to digital literacy classes,
“We have many children in this programme and we plan to expand, so that more children could come and learn to better their lives,” Ishiaka said.
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