UNESCO Regional Director Benoit Sossou said the Youth Mobile training was one of the several UNESCO programmes aimed at enabling universal access and preservation of information knowledge.
He spoke at the YouthMobile Training Closing Ceremony held at the GSS School, yesterday in Abuja.
Sossou, who was represented by the assistant, Mrs. Adele Nibonal noted that the programme was to empower secondary school students to build inclusive knowledge, societies, creating the conditions for sustainable development and peace by promoting universal access.
He added that a similar training would be held in Cross River State for 80 secondary schools from Oban, Akamkpa Local Government.
The Executive Director, Zariah Elizabeth Foundation, Mr. Dayo Akindolani who was the Lead Consultant for the training said the training had been an eye-opener for the students in the last 4 weeks and they are willing to explore further opportunities in building Mobile Application in the nearest future.
Akindolani also added that they were trained using the MIT Application Inventor; the major software was used to design about 14 different mobile applications.
According to him, the training became imperative to equip the secondary school students at a very young age so they can compete with their colleagues home and abroad.
In his remarks, Musa Yakubu Maikasuwa, representative of FCT Education Secretariat described the students as super and intelligent, “the set we have now are more exposed to bring FCT the deserved honour.”
“When you are not ICT compliance you are an illiterate so the students should count themselves extremely lucky for being selected to participate in the workshop.
“You have been provided the skills to make you self-reliance, so you can be established somewhere for being part of this process” he said
“Make sure that the laptop is being utilized and also use the skill for you benefit and that of the society,” Maikasuwa added.
One of the beneficiaries, Miss Aminat Mohammed from Army Day Secondary School, Maitama described the training as important to her life especially computer literacy and application development.
Mohammed said, “I have learnt a lot because now I can develop an app on my own without anyone assisting me. Before now, I can’t even operate a laptop but now I can to a reasonable extent.
“The app I developed is ‘know your president’. It’s like a current affair. So I will advise other students to learn more on ICT because it’s very important. You can get self-employed without waiting for anyone to offer you job.”
The training commenced precisely from 27th July to 21st August 2015. The workshop was supported by Samsung. About 150 Samsung ATIV Book 2 laptops were donated to the participating schools to further complement the training.