As part of activities lined up to commemorate this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD), a foremost Non-Governmental Organization in Nigeria, the Integrative Youth Development (IYD) Web of Support Program, on Friday organized a training programme on integrative Youth Development web of support metrics for students in Lagos Nigeria, with a view to inculcating among participants memorable and measurable acumen needed for weaving a meaningful living.
The Integrative Youth Development (IYD) Web of Support Professional Trainers, are the certified trainers in Nigeria from the United States of American based Institute For Community And Adolescents Resiliency-Unifying Solutions (ICAR-US), the training arm of the Agora College USA.
Speaking at the training held at Harrobs International Secondary School, Alapere Ketu, Lagos and had a good number of students and teachers drawn from within and outside the school.
Amb Paul Philip Iwok, The IYD Web of Support Program Boss and Lead Facilitator of the programme, told participants that Nigerian children and the youthful population in particular needs a web of support education, awareness and enlightenment to help address their social and emotional disconnections.
Giving insight to how the initiative originated, Iwok, who doubles the Country Focal Person, the Agora College, traced the origin of the web of support education to Alaska, United States of America, where the lives of young adults were transformed through the program model.
This, according to Iwok, compelled the government of the United States to adopt the program concept in Schools which was later replicated in Canada and other countries. He mentioned that, the program was inaugurated in Nigeria in July 2019 by an American International Educator, Kathrine Thomson-Stone.
While noting that the global objective of web of support education is to promote those factors that will assist a child grow without being socially or emotionally disconnected, the child development expert stressed that for a child to experience a storm-free development, there exists the ‘Rule of five and Power of More’ which every child who intends to grow and become a responsible adult must recognize and respect, representing five and more personalities, popularly called anchors, that every child must respect in order to thicken their respective webs of support. He listed these anchors to include; mother, father, teacher, religious leader and mentor and other responsible adults in the family, community and society.
The Akwa Ibom born development Professional told Journalists that instilling the web of support knowledge among our children and youths have become overwhelmingly urgent as they will require capacity to provide the future leadership of our dear nation.
In his words, “if there is any viable education that our children and youths presently need, it is the one anchored on Integrative youth development web of support Program Metrics. The reason is not far-fetched. The integrative Youth development web of support was designed and globally adopted to assist and address social and emotional disconnections.
The programme is not a one off arrangement. It has a well-established curriculum that is all encompassing and involves both the teachers, students, faith based community and the society at large.
That is a major reason we are calling on the Federal, state and Local Government authorities in the country to adopt the initiative as a most assured way of taming juvenile delinquencies among our youths. As a nation, we must not fail to remember that any education stripped of social and emotional connections cannot take us anywhere”. He concluded.
Iwok insisted that the group is laced with capacity and support to deliver on this mandate, noting that the group has ceaselessly been involved in the campaign for re-orientation via integrative Youth development web of support in the past and are ready, willing and eager to replicate similar feats at the national, state and local government levels.
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