Female student of Greensprings IB School, Anthony Village, Lagos, Emmanuela Ilok, has highlighted three essential skills every student needs to become globally competitive citizens.
Answering a question during a panel session at the 10th Annual Parenting Conference by LagosMums, the 2022 Rise Global winner listed value-based education (VbE), effective communication, and being service-minded as the skills that have helped her achieve success in academics and win global awards. She went on to explain the importance of these three skills, emphasising the role of her parents and the school in building the skills in her.
She said: “Effective communication is vital to becoming globally competitive. The skill allows you to share your thoughts with the world, and it is useful in everything we do as humans. At Greensprings School, effective communication is nurtured in students from an early age by providing platforms for public speaking through internal events, external competitions, and speech and debate clubs. This approach significantly reduces stage fright and empowers students to communicate with confidence, commanding respect in various settings.
“The second skill every student needs to thrive in a competitive world,” she continued, “is moral and ethical values. I have been adequately supported by my parents who have raised me to be of good behaviour. I have also spent 15 years at Greensprings School, and over time, I have imbibed all the core values of the school. Everything has modelled my character to be a well-behaved individual within and outside the school. Greensprings also emphasises the importance of being responsible digital citizens, encouraging students to uphold good moral values in online interactions.”
In her concluding remarks, llok shined a light on how engaging in community service can give a competitive advantage to students, adding how the IB Diploma programme made students develop the muscle for civic engagement.
“Being service-minded is also a requirement for becoming globally relevant. Students across our school categories are engaged in various forms of community service, but at the IB School, more emphasis is laid on community service through creativity, activity, and service (CAS) projects. Engagement in community service increases empathy, making students selfless and think of how they can make positive impacts in their immediate community. With these three essential skills, I believe we students would make ourselves globally competitive after school in the future” she concluded.
llok is a Yale Young African Scholars Social Impact Award Winner and a Cambridge Outstanding Learner Award Winner.
The 10th Annual Parenting Conference by LagosMums took place on October 7th, 2023, and the event featured educationist and parenting experts.