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‘Training youths to fight extremism’

MicroDevelopment Consulting Limited (MDCL) has embarked on a campaign to train stakeholders to contain violent extremism in the North. The stakeholders, comprising youths from communities in Borno, Yobe, Kano, Kaduna and Plateau states, are to undertake the Positive Voices Campaign Project (PVCP). Chief Executive Officer of  MDCL Furera Jumara said the PVCP would train individuals […]
The post ‘Training youths to fight extremism’ appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.

MicroDevelopment Consulting Limited (MDCL) has embarked on a campaign to train stakeholders to contain violent extremism in the North.

The stakeholders, comprising youths from communities in Borno, Yobe, Kano, Kaduna and Plateau states, are to undertake the Positive Voices Campaign Project (PVCP).

Chief Executive Officer of  MDCL Furera Jumara said the PVCP would train individuals to serve as role models and mentors to youths through Community Engagement Initiatives (CEI’s).

She noted that there has been an increase in bigotry, intolerance and violent activities among youths because there are hardly people to act as a positive influence.

Jumara spoke in Abuja at the launch of the PVCP’s Community Engagement Initiative (CEI).

Her words: “Today is the launch of the positive voice campaign project, CEI. The project is managed by MicroDevelopment Consulting Limited, funded by NSRP (Nigerian Stability and Reconciliation Programme), which is a DIFID (Department for International Development) programme.

“Over the years, there has been a noticeable increase in bigotry, intolerance and violent activities among youths. We believe one contributing factor is the lack of positive influences and role models for youths.

“The PVCP is therefore influenced by the counter-terrorism programme of the Office of the National Security Advisor and is funded by British Council’s NSRP. It is about increasing the resilience of youths to negative influences through the identification and training of individuals from selected states across the country’’.

“These individuals would serve as role models and mentors to youths in their communities through Community Engagement Initiatives that they would embark upon. The project intends to continuously send out positive narratives that promotes tolerance, national identity and civic nationalism through these individuals as well as, we hope that it shows the youth that they can achieve a lot without violence.

“The programme is training groups of youths across five states, we send them out to develop mini projects that they can do for their communities that will embed positive messages in terms of tolerance, peace and issues of countering violent extremism, we call them positive voices basically they are role models.

“After awhile, these pilot scheme that we start with five states is going to be rolled across Nigeria after eighteen months.”

Programme Manager NSRP, Dr Ukoha Ukiwu added, “The selection procedure was very rigorous, many of them where selected through nomination and recommendation from their communities, they are already persons known in their communities and influential, they are not being taken from outside and imposed on the communities. They have been equipped with engagement strategies that will be able to communicate the objectives of their projects. We believe that the different initiatives that each of them will be carrying out are things that their communities will find interesting and useful, we hope that if it is successful, we will be able to publish the results and encourage other actors both within and outside Nigeria to see this as a model to adopt in terms of peace building.”

 

 

The post ‘Training youths to fight extremism’ appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.

Source:The Nation Nigeria

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