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Mrs Betty Anyanwu-Akeredolu, Wife of the Ondo State Governor, said that 378 girls would participate and be empowered by her project, BEMORE Empowered Foundation, in the state.
Anyanwu-Akeredolu made this known at the opening ceremony of 2022 BEMORE Summer Boot Camp, on Monday in Akure.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Foundation is an initiative of Mrs Anyanwu-Akeredolu to achieve gender mainstreaming in policy making in the renewable energy and information communication sector by 2023.
The programme is to train girls on how to design, build and operate solar system and ICT programme and also empwer girls with life enhancing that will improve their socio- economic status.
NAN also reports that the two weeks training would include, for the first time, girls with hearing impairment in the camp.
The wife of the governor explained that the girls were drawn from the three senatorial districts of the state, adding that the 2022 edition was the fifth in the series, while 2,000 girls had passed through the programme since 2017.
Anyanwu-Akeredolu said she was determined to empower young Nigerian girls in critical areas of science and technology by creating opportunities to improve on their lives, and to also contribute to the socio-economic development of their communities.
“I have demonstrated the inherent truism in my parents’ conviction to the extent that educating the girl-child is not a waste.
“I am here standing proudly before you as a living testimony of that profund philosophy and a robust evidence of what it means to create an opportunity for the girl-child.
“In these five glorious years, I have taught my girls how to do it. I have given graphic examples of what it means to have the courage of conviction.
“I have proven to them the wonders of imaginations and the beauty of being a woman in her own terms.
“And the whole essence is to nurture well- rounded, responsible young women equipped with knowledge, skills and good character for a new and better Nigeria,” she said.
Mrs Akeredolu, who called on the girl-child to hold her head high in whatever comes along life’s journey, enjoined them to take their rightful places in an emerging world that belonged to male and female alike.
She also appealed to the new participants to be good ambassadors, and said BEMORE’s previous brand ambassadors had been doing skills instilled in them, which were sufficient as selling points that signpost the efficiency and efficacy of the boot camp.
“BEMORE ambassadors are making waves on all fronts. Not a few have also proven themselves as sterling IT professionals and promising entrepreneurs.
She gave the assurance that by the time these ones would leave the camp, they would have been moulded into “prides of lionesses who can own and defend their territories,” she said.
Also, Chief Olusola Oke, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and the Chairman of the occasion, appreciated BEMORE initiator, saying it was a necessary invention to fill the gap created in the educational policy.
According to Oke, before, emphasis seems to be on degree holders as technical education was abandoned, but with the capacity building initiative, that gap that was very wide, is being narrowed and filled gradually.
“I think it’s an initiative that has come to fill gaps in educational policy of Ondo State.
He prayed God almighty that if the project was sustained, Ondo State would produce manual personnel for the various jobs available, to generate employment, capacity, among others for the people.
