Author: admin

The Young Moms Support Initiative, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) has trained no fewer than 1,500 women on digital skills to expand their businesses and earn decent living.

The Executive Director, Dr Vivian Sonny-Nsirim said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja.

NAN reports that Young Moms Support initiative is supporting and empowering women and children for a better society.

The NGO birthed the largest online community of young women called the Young Moms Forum with over two million active members.

Sonny-Nsirim said that the training was free for all women who owned businesses or willing to own one.

She said that the training was to enable the beneficiaries to utilise digital tools to grow and expand their businesses.

“The training was via Zoom and Closed WhatsApp groups held from Aug. 1 to Aug. 4.

“The essence is to bring women and other marginalised groups into technology.”

This, she said, would provide creative solutions and greater potentialities for innovations that meet women’s needs and promote gender equality.

“The goal was also to expose women to online market stalls, financial tools like whatsapp applications available on Google store, to manage their business finances and records,’’ she said.

Sonny-Nsirim said topics covered during the training included maximising Facebook page for business, advance use of whatsapp and Google drive, as well as graphic design.

“We want the women to understand that something as small as their android phones can go a long way in helping them to drive online traffic and achieve business growth and transformation,” she added.

The executive director called for reform of the country’s education curriculum with emphasis on the teaching of science and technology from primary school to stimulate critical thinking among children, including girls.

She said that technology was increasingly being misused and weaponised, with women and girls disproportionately targeted.

“This is why the NGO is investing in providing digital solutions in agriculture, health and in the fight against gender based violence.

“Rural women can now also market their products around the world without leaving their rural environment via social media platforms as they have gained extensively from the training,’’ she said.

Sonny-Nsirim who holds the traditional title of Ugochinyere I of Igboland and Madubia of Uke kingdom, said a lot could be achieved when women and girls were ICT-literate.

“It will fast track their thinking and help them generate income to cater for their families,” she added.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria

The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) says over 2 million students and staff of higher education institutions will soon have access to online academic resources through the deployment of Blackboard Learning Platform .

The Executive Secretary, TETFund, Sonny Echono, disclosed this at a three-day workshop on the: “Implementation of the Enhanced Blackboard Learning Management System and Train The Trainer Programme” in Abuja on Monday.

Echono said the workshop attracted directors of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from the 253 beneficiary institutions of the Fund.

He said it was part of measures put in place to bridge the digital skills gap in the country’s universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.

“Given the rising significance of ICT across diverse sectors, including education, this initiative holds immense students, and the overall potential to positively impact educators, advancement of our educational landscape.

“Online learning remains critical to our collective success, and so today, as we flag off this programme, the goal is that we would have provided the necessary skills for online Blackboard LMS.

” It will further enrich teaching, learning and research in all 253 of our beneficiary institutions.

“You may recall that for 2019-2020 ICT support intervention, we gave guidelines for e-Learning and training on e-Learning methodologies for hybrid modes of learning.

”So today, with Blackboard, the aim is to provide enhancements that will further improve the quality and mode of delivery of education across the country under our converged services programme,” he said .

Echono added that the impact of the blackboard would be to eliminate the cost of subscription and technical overhead directly from each beneficiary institution.

He said the intervention would ensure that physical and online modes of teaching and learning were cemented once and for all in tertiary institutions across the country.

According to him, Nigerian students will be able to compete favourably with their contemporaries on the global stage with the deployment of blackboard platform.

“When Blackboard enhancements become fully operational, over two million students and staff of these institutions will be able to:

” Access general resources to support learning including online tests and quizzes, submit assignments and electronic grade books which allow immediate review of grades and performance tracking.

“Carry out self and peer-assessment and collaboration on required projects thereby teaching students to provide constructive feedback and learn from each other.

” Access alternative formats of materials (including audio, Braille, ePub and HTML) to accommodate students with disabilities,” he said.

The executive secretary added that it would also give students access an all-in-one web conferencing platform that would allow instructors to hold classes online, and in real time, or record lectures or short videos to post on their course sites.

He said they would also have access to a community of 4000 other tertiary institutions worldwide, with project management trainings.

Speaking further, the TETFund boss said the fund was improving its allocation to ICT development in its intervention programmes to ensure that the country meet up with the present digital reality across the globe.

” Prior to 2022, our ICT Support Intervention was N15 million for Universities and N7.5 million for Polytechnics and Colleges of Education. We took bold steps to increase this intervention to N100 million for Universities and N50 million for Polytechnics and Colleges of Education.

“We envisaged that we would be able to address two main issues: (a) problems common to all our institutions, and (b) problems peculiar and unique to each institution.

”And we have done this by introducing converged services, which this programme is a part of, and by issuing guidelines for FY21/22/23 which will enable utilisation of Funds to address each institution’s peculiar ICT needs,” he added.

He stressed the importance of the increase in its intervention lines to give ICT as an enabler for teaching, learning and research environment.

“As you are aware, the Fund is not only committed to Digital Literacy in particular, but to the transformation of our education system by leveraging on ICT.

” Accordingly, we have commenced various programmes including the Thesis Digitisation Programme, Beneficiary Identity Management Service (BIMS), Tertiary Education, Research, and Application Systems (TeRAS), Consolidated Library Access Platform (CLAP), Aggregated Journal Subscription from EBSCO.

“Online Blackboard, Sponsored Mobile Internet Data on and off campus, Remote Monitoring, BPP Compliance Portal, amongst others. These programmes will deliver significant value to the ICT landscape of our Beneficiary Institutions, ” Echono said.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria