FG to address plight of street children through sports

The Federal Government has identified sports as a potent tool to effectively engage young people and address the plight of vulnerable youth and children across the country.

This follows the commencement of a 3-day training programme for 20 sports coaches drawn from five States of the Federation, as well as four coaches from the Federal Government as monitors.

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States benefiting from the first phase of the training programme are: Kaduna, Gombe, Ekiti, Sokoto and Borno.

Tagged “Line up, Live up training for coaches” (Lulu), the programme which is being facilitated on the platform of the At-Risk-Children Programme ARC-P, an initiative of the office of the Vice President directly supervised by the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, is also being supported by the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

LULU aims at empowering sport coaches with the requisite knowledge on life-skills to effectively engage out-of-school children and other vulnerable young people to take advantage of new opportunities and become productive.

The approach, according to the facilitators, is to use the instrument of sports to empower street children across the country, with a view to redirecting them away from social vices such as violence, crime, drug abuse, drug trade, human trafficking among others.

Addressing participants at the opening of the training programme in Abuja, the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, Mrs Maryam Uwais, said the coaching course is one of the many interventions of the ARC-P initiatives of the federal government geared towards addressing the cross-cutting concerns of children at risk, thereby providing them with a life of dignity.

Mrs Uwais lamented the plight of out-of-school youth and children, who she said are in large numbers across the country.

She urged the participants to take the training seriously and use the knowledge gained to assist the government in its efforts to give a new lease of life to vulnerable children and youth in the country.

She said, “I know it’s not going to be an easy task for you to shoulder this responsibility because most of the youth you will be engaging with are going to be angry and disruptive because of the conditions in which they have found themselves. We all have a responsibility to support them by making sure they are brought into a constructive and productive pathway. So, I plead with you to be strong and firm in supporting us in this effort.

“Many of them need to be aware of skills they can develop if they don’t already have them. So, we are here to give them options that they can validate and develop. I am appealing to you to be patient and support these beneficiaries to acquire life-skills, thereby enabling them to take ownership of their lives.”