…Graduates 52 cohort 1 teachers
Ashoka Africa, an organisation dedicated to fostering social innovation, has enhanced the knowledge and skills of teachers in selected public schools to boost the learning outcomes of their students.
Speaking to journalists at the 2024 graduation ceremony of the Ashoka Africa CTEACH programme in Lagos, Josephine Nzerem, regional director for Ashoka Anglophone West Africa, said that equipping teachers with the right tools and resources helps to enhance their performances in the classroom, thereby, boosting the learning outcomes for their students.
She said Ashoka Africa as a global network of social entrepreneurs wants to drive a new vision for the education sector through teachers who when inspired, will lead their students to become changemakers.
According to her, the CTEACH programme has empowered public school teachers to have a perception change towards their role as teachers.
She added that the training makes the teachers powerful and influencers to their students and communities.
“Ashoka Africa will always be there to support teachers and bring them through processes and also increase their visibility and impact,” she said.
Angelou Ezeilo, co-president of Ashoka Africa and CTEACH director, said the CTEACH changemaker teacher activation programme is one of the initiatives Ashoka is deploying to improve change-making skills in young teachers in public schools.
In the last year of the programme, she said, 52 teachers drawn from different education districts have been impacted with new skills including conscious empathy, new leadership and collaboration.
Read also: Ashoka Africa empowers youths with skills to lead, solve social problems
“These are the skills that young public school teachers need. We are doing a mindset shift; we want to connect teachers to the reason they became teachers in the first place. We want to make sure that this change-making becomes a lifestyle and prepare the younger generation of teachers for the future,” Ezeilo said.
Also speaking, Agboola Samuel, valedictorian of the Ashoka CTEACH Changemaking cohort 1, said the programme has instilled in him the skills of a change maker, and he promised to replicate the same in the classroom.
He lauded Ashoka for making the journey through the programme a transformative one and for providing him and the rest of the teachers the opportunity to understand new skills such as Conscious empathy in teaching and learning.
Ayomide Akran, founder of Pink Diva and an Ashoka Young Changemaker, who launched her book, said the book is targeting young readers her telling her change-making story.
She planned to use her organisation, to solve the problem called period poverty.
She said young girls in underserved communities do not have enough money to buy menstrual hygiene products, but she hopes to provide these girls with a solution by creating reusable pads that are cost-effective.
“The reusable pad is environmentally sustainable, 100 percent hygienic because it is made with cotton materials,” she said.
On his part, David Onilude, the founder of Technow, a global not-for-profit organisation has empowered young people in underserved communities with digital literacy skills.
He said the technology company was founded during the Covid-19 period to address the marginalisation of young people in underserved communities in Badagry Lagos
Onilude said the vision was to ensure that young people in rural communities have access to quality education, digital skills and digital literacy to become self-sufficient.
CTEACH Changemaker Teachers Activation is an initiative by Ashoka designed as a one-year ‘learning journey’ for JSS1 to JSS3 teachers in Lagos State.
The programme is to empower young teachers in Lagos State and Nigeria with new skills to thrive in the 21st-century world.
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