Over 50 youths in different Senior Secondary Schools residing in Anthony Village, Lagos State have benefited from the ongoing free training in computer skills organised by Anthony Lions Club and supported by Anthony Village Life Fountain Hospital and Precise Financial System.
President of the club, Larry James Useba said the club is a member of Lions Club International. As you are aware, Lion’s Club International is in over 200 countries in different parts of the world and what we do is we partner with the government and society to address a need so when we identify these needs we partner with the community that we serve and also government to be able to serve these needs and our cardinal focus, our areas of vision; diabetes, youth development, child cancer and that is what we really focus on to be able to serve the society.
“So basically at the moment we identified the need for secondary school students who are deficient in computer knowledge because we noticed that our judicial system is computerized in the sense that every examination that they write is being done through the computer-based test and we noticed that they are failing because they don’t have these skills.
“After we have identified that need, we went to the various schools in Anthony and we identified students from the less previleged families and brought them together to be trained in the usage of computer skills .
Larry disclosed that the club has all the names and the phone numbers of the students and also their parents as a way of monitoring and ensuring that the students attend the trainings.
The training starts on Mondays and end on Thursday and we have been able to ensure that they are taught skills on Microsoft Office, type-setting, accessing the internet, how to create an email among other functions on the computer.
“ So basically these are some of the areas that we can give back to society and we believe the computer training will be a yearly programme because we are encouraged with the turn-out of students.
The president of Anthony Lions Club further added that the training took place in a Computer Training School where they have so many computers in the building and the building is also used for JAMB examinations because we want the training to be practical based. Practical in the sense that it is not just theoretical things but the students will be able to operate the computer and learn what they need to know about the computer.
Talking about the criteria used in selecting the students, Larry said the club decided that it will be from Senior Secondary School 1 to SS3. We did not go looking for the brightest students or whatever. For now we chose students residing in Anthony Village because that is their area of coverage. We hope to extend it to other locations which will still be within Anthony and its environs.
Even if you are not schooling within Anthony, you must be resident in Anthony so that during the holidays, you can be able to attend the class and not pay for transportation to come to Anthony to receive the training.
He urged well meaning Nigerians to support Anthony Lions Club so that the number can be increased to 500 students in subsequent years and the lives of these students will be affected positively.
One of the beneficiaries, Michael James said, he is happy to have benefitted from the computer training organised by Anthony Lions Club.
“ I will put what I have learnt into practice and I encourage other youths to participate in future training because they will benefit from the training.”