In commemoration of this year’s International Day of the Girl Child, a not-for-profit organisation, Black Girls Dream Initiative has concluded the Ibadan debate competition which featured about 16 secondary schools across the local governments in Ibadan, Oyo State.
The Initiative, is focused on reducing the gender gap by inspiring women and girls to be leaders and decision makers.
According to the organisers, the program which spanned through 3 weeks had much focus on training young girls in the art of public speaking to make meaningful social impacts.
The training of the secondary school girls, served as a prelude to the main event.
It was held across 16 secondary schools from September 27 to September 30.
The debate competition started in the early days of October and climaxed with a grand finale on October 11 – a day which coincided with the International Day of the Girl Child.
The event which was held at Mapo Hall had in attendance, Hon. Fagade Abisoye, Hon. Seyi Adisa, Hon. Victor Olojede, Dr. Mutiat Oladejo, Hon. Fatimah Hassan.
At the end of the competition, Queen’s School emerged as winner with 85.6points defeating Abadina College (78.7points) and Muslim Model College (76points) to the second and third positions respectively.
The Founder and Project Lead of the initiative, Karimot Odebode in her remarks said “We want the world to relate with Black Girl’s Dream Initiative innate character as an organization that puts the black girl’s dream of conquering the world.
“The first stage in this process is the black girl’s ability to find her voice, then her feet; it’s a process that we will scale through with our consistent efforts of investing in the human capacity development of the girl child.
“With arts, education and advocacy, we will surely achieve gender equality.
“We also appreciate our sponsors; First Bank, Prince Akinremi Foundation, Funmi Ayinke Foundation, Molped, Nigerian Breweries, Beedel Construction, who made a bet with us by investing in the growth of these black girls.”
The Managing Director of First Bank, Sola Adeduntan who was represented by the Business Manager, Mrs. Muyiwa Dolapo in his opening remarks, charged the teens to ensure that there’s no true literacy without financial literacy and that they should see the platform as a means of capacity development.
While presenting the awards and prizes to the winners, Abisoye Fagade said the competition which is aimed at expanding the human capacity of students is highly commendable.
The winner, Chukwu Chinerecherem Jacinta who represented Queens School acknowledged that, “the competition gave me an opportunity to express myself and proffer solutions to issues affecting the country”.