YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
This programme has been put in place to address the plight of the
Rural Youth. It has been noted with much concern that, the rural
youth occupy a larger proportion of the rural communities’
population, yet most of them are not meaningfully involved in community
development and depend on their parents for survival, and hence
BAC felt the importance of initiating this programme.
In the view of achieving the vision and mission of BAC, it has
been important to integrate the youth in community development.
This is a process geared towards improving their livelihoods and
also achieving sustainability as the development process would be
passed over from one generation to the other.
The programme not only supports and facilitates economic development
activities among the youth but as supporting social cultural activities
and also spiritual issues. A holistic approach is applied
Behaviour Change programme has been integrated in the youth programme
in order to create awareness among the youth and parents on significant
aspects of behaviour change. The behaviour change programme was
initiated in order to assist the youth that have fallen victim of
drug abuse, alcohol abuse, sexual immorality and juvenile delinquency.
Currently, a number of youth are involved in various activities.
Groups approach has been seen as the most appropriate. Some of the
activities the youth are involved in include income generating activities
which are either on-farm or off-farm and social cultural activities.
This programme operates in the BAC Area Based Programme of Kamara
and Tenges Divisions. It also cuts across in other parts of Africa
where BAC is in operation with past students supporting the rural
youth to achieve their set objectives.
Students social clubs and community support groups
Besides facilitating and supporting the youth out of school, the
students are also involved in various activities through the social
clubs and community support groups.
Social clubs are groups formed and geared towards building up on
the talents of the students. Social clubs have been seen as strong
tools of disseminating information if positively taken. The main
objectives of these social clubs are to have students who can be
role models that can be replicated in the rural communities.
The activities done in these social clubs include competetitions
in drama, public speaking, personal presentation and debates; which
build up on the student’s capability to innovate and also
communication skills. Other activities include awareness creation
on topical issues; which gives them a chance to work on community
mobilization skills and much more. One significant aspect about
social clubs is appreciation of each others culture.
Community support groups on the hand were initiated inorder to
create a we feeling among the students, through knowing each other
more intimately and sharing on areas of dificulties.All students
have not been equally endowed with resources such as financial,
or even academic. It’s through the community support groups
that students appreciate these disperities and initiate ways of
addressing them.
What about religion? It has been noted with much appreciation that
students have diverse religious backgrounds. This has been recognized
but since we emphasize on community sharing, students join in fellowship
irrespective of the various religious backgrounds in ecumenical
prayers.Here, students have a chance to appreciate each others religion.
BACK TO TOP
|
