Educating young people on life skills

A one-year project dubbed “Ongea” sponsored by the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA) and implemented by Mulika Tanzania, has started capacity building training to secondary school teachers.

The training dubbed Training of Trainers (ToT) to teachers would help them to transmit the acquired knowledge to their students on the importance of utilizing, identifying their human rights at school and respective areas.

The aim of this project is to make young people aware of their roles in contributing to their country’s development, particularly in promoting industrialization towards the medium-term economy.

Also, the project will provide youth space in the city by empowering them and giving them an opportunity to discuss how they will use their role in shaping development efforts in the country.

This project intends to be operated through issues that will grow in schools and give students a chance to discuss different concepts in development as education and healthcare.

Mulika Tanzania project coordinator Ms. Dianarose Lyimo said recently at the ToT that most of the time students acquire education but unfortunately, they do not know their rights in schools and do not know how to utilize obtained education accordingly.

According to her, they decided to come up with such initiative because there is a gap to secondary school students, though they are empowered to be self-confident, accountable and understand their human rights, unfortunately they still lack education on the importance of such issues.

“Today we are here to train teachers to be ToT under the Ongea project, the teachers will help to transmit the acquired knowledge to the students in their respective schools,” she said.

According to her, after the training they expect teachers would provide opportunities for young people in the art industry to use their work to encourage young people to realize their responsibility fully.

She further explained that it will allow young people to know what responsibilities they have and how to bring about solutions to the various problems in one way or the other, and encourage the development of the country.

Ms. Lyimo noted that starting April 5, to May this year, Kinondoni schools are expected to discuss different topics on what roles should students have in reducing or eliminating the problem of failure for students in schools, what roles does the family play in ensuring they are doing good at school, how can students protect themselves from infection, HIV and early pregnancy and what steps does a student take to ensure that he or she hinders and eliminates all sexual harassment.

Other topics will include, what roles should students have in making sure they participate well in development processes, how should students prepare for existing opportunities, how can students ensure the best use of digital technology in enhancing education well-being and how can students protect themselves from damaging or moral erosion from social networks.

Tambaza secondary school teacher Ms. Asma Mihanzi told Success that it was unfortunate that a lot of schools in the country were focusing more on syllabus than other development issues thereby causing a lot of students and the public fail to recognize their rights.

“Not every teacher present here truly understands his/her right or students’ rights in schools, unfortunately a big number of people in the country do not know their rights,” she said.

Ms. Mihanzi who is also a general studies teacher noted that she has noticed at her school, sometimes when a teacher is not in class students do not take an initiative to ask the administration department why there is no teacher in class instead they just seat waiting.

“Most students go to school but they do not know their rights, they do not know the importance of knowing issues, right of being responsible, accountable and the right of being a student,” she said.

A Makongo secondary school teacher Mr. Ramadhan Hussein stressed on the importance of students to know their rights because whenever anything happened, whether good or bad they would be in position to protect themselves without fear.

Mulika team led by chief executive officer Mr. Huseein Melele, noted that in Africa young people are faced with twice the problems than the opportunities that exist around them. The young people need an ‘eye’ to see challenges facing them as opportunities to build social enterprise and business around them.

“As Mulika Tanzania we aim to see young peoples’ mind liberated hence being able to utilize such opportunities. Through the use of digital communication channels and traditional media, we aim to reach the majority of young people with rightful information to inform and motivate them towards various development agendas,” he noted.