AREAi reaches 9047 beneficiaries, holds workshops to promote digital equity

The Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi) has organised series of Regional Education Digital Equity Workshops as part of activities to end months of community surveys, stakeholders consultations and grassroots engagement and information materials development within the Education Digital Equity Initiative funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office under the Prosperity Fund’s Digital Access Programme.

The regional roundtable events, held in four states including Kwara, Kano, Adamawa and Ebonyi states, provided the opportunity to facilitate exchange of new understanding on strategies and solutions to the challenges of education digital equity in rural communities and remote schools.

In all the states, the roundtable workshops had representatives from the host state governments and supporting stakeholders that facilitated the implementation of the programme and beneficiary groups which included school leaders, teachers and students as well as key education stakeholders.

The events also featured presentations of various findings from the extensive surveys and interviews conducted across 24 schools and 20 communities during the initial phase of the project. Each of the events also witnessed the launch of the three different output materials for students, teachers, school leaders and education administrators.

At the end of the event, over 10,000 copies of output materials including the Learning Manual for Students, Access Toolkit for Teachers and School Leaders and Policy Guide for Education Administrators were distributed to the event attendees as well as to the beneficiary states.

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Speaking on the essence of the regional education digital equity roundtable events across the states , Prince Gideon Olanrewaju, chief executive director at Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi), emphasized the need to leverage the contributions of all stakeholders to bridge the gap in education digital equity in rural communities and remote schools across the 6 geopolitical zones in Nigeria.

He said: “It has become imperative based on post-COVID19 realities to address digital exclusion by providing and widely disseminating series of evidence-based, comprehensive education materials that lays out steps and ideas for rural schools, remote communities, community-based initiatives and low-income families to adopt in accessing remote learning materials, online education resources options and digital learning opportunities.”

Speaking during the presentation of key learnings and recommendations from the output materials, Olanrewaju reiterated that in furtherance of the organisation’s mandate on digital equity as one of its programmatic focus areas, it was interesting to see that there are several innovative strategies that the government can leverage to remove barriers to access and usage of Information and communication technologies for learning.

As part of positioning itself as a thought leader in ensuring disadvantaged students in rural communities across Nigeria have the digital awareness, technological capacity and infrastructural resources to participate in digital learning, the organisation announced the launch of a series of initiatives which includes a STEM training for girls and a digital skills training for teachers.