We specially wish to congratulate you for making it to 2013. The Sharing Education and Learning for Life (SELL) Foundation is grateful to God for all her work with the young people that she has met and those that the programme has created an impact in them. Bearing in mind the Foundation’s Vision Statement; “young people with compassionate hearts; building peaceful community”, the SELL Foundation has always had hope in the young people knowing clearly that the young people are agents of change and that change is possible. 

      Therefore, in 2013, we hope to keep with this Vision by working in communities with support of the Facilitators who are trained and the ones that we hope to train. 

Our outline of programme for 2013 includes; Community Trainings, Mentoring Trainings, Workshops, Refresher and Annual General Meeting, etc. Details of this shall be reported in subsequent blogs each time it happens.

Before I end this blog, I will like to give you a brief update of the community training of facilitators that happen last December at the Interfaith Vocational Youth Training Centre, Bokkos, Plateau State, Nigeria.

The training was on 14th – 18th December 2012 and ten young adults attended. The unit shared was the Self - Awareness Unit of SELL. When the training started, participants gave the following as things that attracted them to the SELL Programme because they have all experienced the workshop at one point before they were selected for the training. They said the SELL Programme is very educative, interactive, unique and has a simple approach. In view of this, they will want to take part in sharing it with other young people, and that is what have motivated them to come for the training.

It was a very interesting group to work with because they were very open and were asking very useful questions that help in furthering the cause of the training. Also during the training, the participants were shared into study groups and given handout material to study and present to the larger group. They all did their best being that it was the first time they were making such a presentation in a SELL gathering. The Resource Team appreciates Hilda the leader of the Jos Area team and the other Jos Area Team members for organising the training. Hilda was with us at the training to take care of our feeding and other logistics.

While the training was going on at Bokkos, the existing facilitators in Jos (the Area Team) -Alex, Grace and Beji were out there running a SELL workshop at a Computer Institute in Jos. According to Grace who gave us the report of the workshop, the unit of SELL covered was Self – Awareness. They had 21 participants and it was an interfaith group. In recent time, the Jos area Team had have cause to run 3 workshops at a stretch, the SELL Resource Team cannot applaud the Jos Area Team enough for their zeal to share this programme with others.

On a final note for this week, we are grateful to God and to you for being part of our 2012, we look forward to a better 2013 together. From the Resource Team, we say a big thank you!

Written by:

Maria Dagogot

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Every human by nature is made to long for happiness, prosperity, ecological development, self-fulfillment and an insatiable and unending desire for self-discovery and maximization of his/her intellectual, physical and spiritual abilities. All these are values that cannot be achieved in isolation but in relationship with like-minded creatures. However over the years we have lost this values and our society has gone into chaos.

 2012 was a turbulent year for our dear country Nigeria, it witnessed series of sectarian bombing and economic uncertainties, in spite all these, the SELL Foundation never gave up. We continued our work with the young adults who we believe holds the solution to the chaos and madness around. They also have the potential to plunge us into more darkness if their energy is not well managed and guided for good. We made it our target not to give in, to the instability and leave North-East Nigeria as many Civil Society Organizations are doing. In 2012, we engaged young adults across the region, with the SELL Programme. Reaching them with this Programme is to assist them to think and choose what is best for them and create a peaceful community. We believe this to be work in progress and things will get better if we keep sowing this seed of change. 

We wish to give you a preview of how our 2012 went. The year 2012, saw us breaking new grounds and creating new opportunities to work with young adults across the North-East, Plateau, some southern states in Nigeria and Kumasi in Ghana.  Towards the end of the year, we added two (2) new staff to the Team, for as they say, “the harvest is plenty and the laborers are few”. We are hoping and trusting the Lord of the harvest to grant us more resources to engage more hands to help us deliever on our mandate of having young people with compassionate hearts building peaceful community.

A total of 1,101 young adults were reached with the SELL programme in the year under review, 719 males against 382 females. The break-down according to the unit of the programme they got is as follows: Community Building (209), Justice (50), Leadership (656), Self-Awareness (74), Peace Building (74) & Wisdom of Traditions (84).

Year 2013 promises to be a busy one with almost every weekend having us engaging young adults across the North-East, Plateau, FCT, some Southern States of Nigeria and Kumasi-Ghana; this will be possible with the young adults that we have trained as facilitators and many we will yet train to help in achieving the mandate of building a peaceful community. As we move around listening and interacting with young people, giving them opportunities to share and make lasting choices, we covert your prayers for safety and open hearts, until we return with news of our activities. “Go tell your neighbor that help is on its way”, and for us, you are that help.    

Written by;

Oni Gbenga Isaac, 

Programme Coordinator, SELL Foundation.