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From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
An educationist, Uduak-Abasi Ukpabio, has joined forces with Saros International Education Centre and several other stakeholders in the education sector to launch a Peace Tale Competition to promote peaceful and harmonious relationship among children and young adults.
The competition, she added, is aimed at exploring peace and conflict through indigenous folktales, and building youth capacity for peace through storytelling and it’s targeted at youths from ages 14 to 16 on one category, and ages 17 to 21 in another category.
Speaking to journalists at the launch of the competition in Abuja, Uduak explained further that the whole idea was to allow participants choose from the list of provided folktales and rewrite them in a way that reflects peace and harmonious relationship.
She added: “We need to imbibe the culture of peace in the next generation with logical thinking capacity to initiate and achieve peace wherever they are. Panel of judges have been selected to critically x-ray the entries that would come, and expectedly arrive at outstanding entries for adequate reward.”
Uduak was optimistic that the Peace Tale Competition would bring out the best in the young adults, and also provide them with the opportunity to sharpen their skills of peace-building for the betterment of the society.
She appreciated the support that came from partners which, she added, resulted in the success of the launch of the competition, adding that entries would continue to be accepted for the next few weeks.
On of the partners, Youth Alive Foundation (YAF), appreciated the innovation, particularly as it concern youths and way they can be involved in building peaceful society.
YAF Executive Director, Dr. Udy Akpan, in her remarks, said, “we are always committed to anything that would promote youth empowerment. And that is what we have done in the past 20 years. We always get involved in youth advocacy policies and also in encouraging youths to participate in governance.
“At this point, we cannot ignore the unending assault on youths in different areas by different people including the Police. Notwithstanding, we are very interested in innovation and we think that approach of engagements with youths have not yielded the desired result, and that’s because people in government and policy makers don’t understand the demographic.
“So, there’s urgent need to change the way we approach the youths so we can catch their attention, and that is what we are always interested in.”
She commended the initiator of the competition and promised more support and collaborations, especially in area of youth empowerment.
Meanwhile, the Founder, Saro International Education Centre, Rosemary Udo-Imeh, confirmed the ability of the competition to bring out the best in the students in terms of logical thinking as well as improved comprehensive writing skills.
She encourage parents to support their children to participate in the competition, and they should visit the school website to access the link to the stories, judging criteria, and other requirements to successfully participate in the competition.
