Lions Quest Nigeria, implementers of Lions Quest Skills for Adolescence, a programme of the Lions Club International Foundation has successfully trained over 300 teachers from 138 schools in Nigeria.
In the programme targeted at teaching young people skills necessary for everyday success has been extended to over 12,000 students across schools in Lagos, Ogun and Abuja.
Lion Quest is a comprehensive social and emotional (SEL) youth development programme that promotes character education, bully prevention, drug awareness and service learning. It also promotes a caring, safe, well managed and participatory learning environment that allows students to develop 21st Century life skills.
Kola Oyekanmi, country coordinator, Lions Quest Nigeria and secretary Lions Quest Nigeria Board of Trustees made the disclosure during an interaction as part of activities to welcome their international trainer, Archana Bhatt who visited Nigeria from India.
Oyekanmi reeling out the successes of Lion Quest Nigeria since it was resuscitated in 2013, said it has secured approval to implement the programme in public schools in two states – Osun and Cross River, starting with two local government areas in each state for pilot implementation.
“Presently, we are in the process of finalising an MoU with Osun State Ministry of Education, and when that happens over 2,000 teachers would have been trained to affect over 200,000 students.”
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According to Kola Oyekanmi the expansion of the implementation of the programme in Nigeria will widen the scope of prevention of many youths from the dangers of smoking and the risk of using and abusing drugs and alcohol.
Archana Bhatt, the senior trainer from India who was excited about the progress being made by the new leadership in Lion Quest Nigeria said more people are encouraged to volunteer as trainers and get certified, stating that it was necessary to increase the capacity of the Lion Quest to reach out to a larger population of youths in the country.
She said the group engages in follow up to monitor implementation process and update the trainers on new developments.
Lions Quest programme are implemented and operated in 85 countries in the world with more than 620,000 educators trained and certified worldwide to participate in the programme. Its curriculum and materials have been translated into 50 languages. In all, nearly 15 million young people have benefited from Lion Quest programs.
