Hacey, Experts call for digital inclusion of girl child
Hacey Health Initiative, a non-governmental organisation is urging the federal government and key private sector players to take as a priority the inclusion of the girl-child in digital skills training.
Speaking at the Girl Child Summit in Lagos in commemoration of the International Day of the Girl Child, Isaiah Owolabi, the Co-Founder and Project Director of HACEY Health Initiative stressed the importance of the summit in lending a voice to the girl child.
He maintained that girls should have opportunities to access Education, quality, health services and the ability to do anything.
“Girls can be millionaires, presidents, doctors and technology is part of whatever they decide to be. Society should not decide what a girl child should be, they should be able to decide for themselves.
“We also see in the case of gender-based sexual violence in societies; that a lot of men believe that they have a right to either lay their hands or beat a young woman or a girl and that is not right.
“So, it’s important to first, empower girls to know their rights,” he stated.
Owolabi stressed the importance of focusing on the implementation and acceleration of interventions that will help young girls live to their potential.
Similarly, keynote speaker at the summit, Nkemdilim Begho, maintained that the girl-child stands the risk of losing a place in the workplace if they are not trained in technology.
Speaking on the topic, “empowering girls for a digital world, ‘her future, her technology” said there is a need for the girlchild to embrace technology.
According to her, a lot of the jobs today will no longer exist in the future, hence the need for the girl child to be grounded in technology.
“Digital skills will be a foundation of whatever you do. You need to embrace it and know how to use it to navigate your future. In the world of today, technology is useful in any field or sector, in Art, Agriculture, securities, etc.”
She told the girls at the summit to always make sure there is technology in any chosen course of study.
“As a girl child, there are lots of opportunities in technology, like coding, data science, etc. There will be challenges, but passion, impact and possibility will drive you into breaking barriers.”
Speaking about the challenges faced by the girl child, she said, “the biggest one starts at home. Because their parents do not understand technology themselves, in their minds, it’s for boys and a lot of times they enrol their boys in coding clubs than the girls while they ask their girls to go and do home economics.
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“We need to make sure that as parents we play our roles that both our boys and girls are ready for the future because technology is going to be in every single field and the truth is the jobs that your kids are going to do don’t exist yet,” she said.
Also, Project Lead, Girl Child Summit, Mercy Chioma, expressed her happiness that girls are now exposed to opportunities like this and know that they can be what they can be without any barrier.
According to her, it is important that we give girls a chance and expose them to these kinds of opportunities.
“Nigeria is growing, we are now seeing the emergence of organizations that are particular about the empowerment of girls because we need to break the obstacles that limit girls; let them know that they can be better”.
