IDGC: VFN Builds Girls’ Capacity On Digital Skills, SRHR, Life Skills In Osun

An NGO in Osun State, Value Female Network (VFN) has organised a one day capacity building on digital skills, life skills, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for over a hundred girls in commemoration of the 2021 International Day of the Girl Child (IDGC).

The event, which held at VFN House, beside grand palace event center, adjacent Nipco filling station, GRA, Osogbo, was attended by teenage girls from the rural and urban communities in the State on Monday, October 11.

Addressing the girls, a Child Right Advocate, Yemi Nature, while speaking on the topic, “The Digital Divide The Bridge,” urged all stakeholders to rise up and ensure that no girl is cut-off in digital literacy.

He urged the girls to shun the negative effects of social media and only utilise the positive ones for their betterment. Nature, after taking the girls through digital tips, how to make effecient use of the social media and the internet, project some life skills and raise discourse around their challenges, advised them not to succumb to gender inequality.

The advocate tasked the girls to avail themselves of skills that would make them financially empowered in order to meet up with the digital world.

Also speaking, the project coordinator, Miss Ifeoluwa Ogunkola, called on the girls to see digital space as a tool to ventilate their challenges in order for stakeholders to come to their rescue.

Ogunkola explained that the event was organised by VFN to expose the girls, gathered from Oke-Ake, Baale-Baale, Eboolobi and Osogbo communities in the State, to tips on how to be digitalised especially as the world still battles COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, the participants Girls have urged the Federal and State Governments to focus more attention on the challenges confronting them with a view to ameliorating them.

While discussing the event’s theme: “Digital Generation, Our Generation,” they complained that their schools in the rural areas lack computers and internet facility and lamented that it has been contributing to their poor performance in external examinations, especially the ones that require digital literacy.

Their other demands from government and other stakeholders included building of modern and we’ll equiped schools with digital facilities, medical facilities especially those that seel to cater for their Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, and provision of menstrual pads.

Speaking, a participant at the programme, Miss Mopelola Adedigba from Baale Baale community in Osogbo, said, “I want our government to give us computers in our school so that we can be digital literate.”

For Rachael Akinola from Oke-Ake community in the State, “The cost of buying our menstrual pads is too expensive. Sometimes, some of us use clothes because our parents cannot afford to get us pads. I want to beg our government to make pads free so that we can live hygienic life.”

Other speakers addressed the topic: “The Role of Digitalization in the Elimination of Gender Inequality, Gender-Based Violence and all Forms of Gender Discrimination.”

The NGO distributed menstrual pads, bags and other useful items to the participants at the end of the capacity building which also featured community leaders and parents.