A Pan African Digital Rights and Inclusion organisation, Paradigm Initiative (PIN), on Tuesday said it was celebrating 15 years of impacting the lives of no fewer than 5,000 under-served African youth with improved livelihoods.
Mr Gbebga Sesan, its Executive Director, said in a statement that it had impacted on the livelihoods of under-served youths through digital opportunities and the protection of their online rights.
Sesan said that PIN had for more than eight years played an instrumental role in advancing internet freedom, proposing policy solutions and monitoring legal and policy framework around Information Communication Technology (ICTs) on the continent.
He said that it was to ensure citizen rights and that the contribution was strengthened by the organisation’s competencies in ICT capacity building, research and reports.
The executive director reaffirmed the organisation’s commitment toward digital inclusion and digital skills up scaling.
Sesan said that programme beneficiaries were currently enjoying better quality lives and more internet freedom with increased awareness of their online rights.
According to him, this has mainly been achieved through the organisation’s flagship programme, Digital Inclusion which includes Life Skills, ICTs, Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship training (LIFE)
‘’Digital Readiness Programme for Girls and a software engineering school, Dufuna which targets high potential young Africans who are tech-driven.
‘’The Digital Inclusion programme has grown in leaps and bounds, having started in a community in Ajegunle, Lagos State, South Western Region of Nigeria.
‘’Today, the LIFE programme is being implemented in Senegal and three regions in Nigeria namely South-West, South-East and North-West Region,’’ he said.
According to him, working in partnership with organisations such as Mentor an Africa Child Initiative, Startup Kebbi, and Youth and Women Empowerment Centre (YOWEC), the LIFE programme had since expanded.
Sesan said that it had expanded to Ogun, Kebbi and Rivers and that the programme was also rolled out in secondary schools under the auspices of LIFE@Schools Clubs.
The executive director said that under the technology club, students were trained weekly using the same curriculum as the LIFE programme in the process of up scaling their digital skills.
According to him, at the advent of the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) in 2020, PIN introduced virtual version of the LIFE training programme which had enabled the organisation to train young people in 12 African countries.
He gave the countries as Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
According to him, the organisation has also trained a considerable number of non-profit organisations and educational institutions on the usage of ICT for digital security as well as online and social media advocacy.
The executive director said that the training was through its annual digital rights reports which were converted into short films to speak more to the younger audience.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports PIN is a social enterprise that builds ICT-enabled support systems and advocates for digital rights in order to improve the livelihoods of under-served young Africans.
(NAN)
