By Gabriel Dike
Worried by the decline of social values among kids and youths in the country, an educationist and Chief Executive Officer of Oraks Konsult, Mrs. Franca Orakwue, in conjunction with Superkids Publications, has concluded plans to take the campaign of positive value change to schools and worship centres.
Orakwue, who spoke to The Education Report on her pet project, said the campaign is meant to spread positive values among school kids and youths in the society, in schools or worship centres.
The educationist, who started her drive for values change since 2013, disclosed that the positive values campaign will be officially launched on November 30 in Lagos, to reach out to more kids and youths.
According to her, the vision is to promote positive values among children, youths and relevant stakeholders in society, provide effective and sustainable platform for constant mobilisation of interests, ideas and resources to accelerate actions towards raising positively oriented society.
Her words: “The initiative is a multi-stakeholder engagement and advocacy programme, promoting positive values and taking action to help children and youths to fulfil their potential and overcome the twin scourges of hunger and extreme poverty.”
She explained that the objectives of the campaign include to constantly advocate for positive values among youths, promote the rights of children to live and grow to fulfil potential, improve life expectancy by reducing incidents of negative habits and behaviour among young people, reduce incidents of self-induced poverty among youths, reduce incidents of juvenile delinquency and child pregnancy, engage relevant stakeholders on continuous basis to mobilise support and action and coordinate the overall implementation of programme strategy.
Among programmes outlined by the Oraks Konsult boss to reach out to kids and youths are free distribution of character building publications, seminars, conferences and rallies, grassroots/neighbourhood mobilisation, outreach initiatives targeted at in-and-out-of-school children/destitutes, radio/TV enlightenment programmes and mass media advocacy.
On the forthcoming launch of positive values initiative, Mrs. Orakwue explained that top government officials, representatives of UNICEF, Ministry of Women Affairs, National Orientation Agency, (NOA) religious bodies/leaders and the Ministry of Education have agreed to attend the event because of the importance of the campaign.
The educationist called on corporate bodies and wealthy individuals to join Oraks Konsult in the campaign to redirect the youths to positive values.
She revealed that 10 public schools would receive 200 copies of books on etiquette and positive values while 20 orphanages would get 100 copies noting, “our target is to push out 10,000 of the books.’’
She also expressed concern about the standard of education stating that, “the current curriculum is overloaded and at the end of the day, the students don’t seem to have learnt anything. Civic Education curriculum is incomplete without etiquette and manners and schools do not have teachers.’’
Orakwue urged the Federal Government to include etiquette, manners and skills in the curriculum for Civic Education, pointing out that those values are buried in the curriculum and thus, are not taught properly in schools.