By Evelyn Osagie
Over 400 children will not forget in a hurry the fun-filled learning experiences they’ve received over the last three weeks fun learning feast at Iloye community in Sango Ota, Ogun State. Tagged: the Festival of Inspiration, the three-week long educational feast, which is organised by Children Academic and Vocational Support Initiative (CAVSI), will come to a close today.
Set to impact less privileged children in the Sango community of Ogun State, the fest is yearly experience for children in the area during the Yuletide.
It is one of the ways the foundation is constantly empowering children and youths of the community with educational support, seminar and career counselling.
According to the CAVSI founder, Hakeem Ariori, the festival, which is in the 16th edition, is an outreach programme geared towards learning and mentorship.
At this year’s edition, which kicked off on November 30 with the theme: “Focus”, the kids were made to compete in different activities, such as street football, treasure hunt, tyre race, spelling and reading competition, IQ games, Disney word search games, brain teasers and bank seminar, among others. 410 children were in participation.
It was declared open by the chairman of Itesiwaju CDA, Orile Iloye, Alhaji Rasheed Kowope.
Along with other fun learning activities, the festival will come to a close today with an award ceremony, featuring awards for the winners in all the categories.
But, according to the football category will receive more awards, such as youngest football player, best keepers, highest goal scorers, most valuable players, all time highest goal scorer and more.
The street football competition was like a world cup championship. The children, who looked so excited at the weekend, were kitted with football Jersey from our sponsors.
During the course of the festival, they were taught to work together as teams, see their opponents as challenges in life that must be surmounted, and to focus on winning irrespective of who scored the goals.
Little wonder then that they went all out to pitch as if there was millions of naira to be won. They began by praying like the professional football players and played with uncommon agility.
“Sports and games have always been great avenues, not only to teach the children healthy rivalry, but to educate them as well. Formal and informal education is the gateway to a better and excellent life.
Since 2014, the event has become a December carnival that brings together hundreds of children from over 50 schools in a fun learning experience.
The children are being mentored in different career fields and every sporting activity they undergo, is a life lesson for them to know how to plan, work as a team and make use of whatever they have.
“We challenged the children to improve on themselves and impact in their world. We are glad that these children could be engaged meaningfully during this season and it’s obvious that it’s having long lasting impression on them,” Ariori, said at the festival.
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For Ariori, who has been involved with children in the last 20 years, the festival is one of the ways CAVSI is encouraging and inspiring children in the rural areas through different life enriching programmes. Besides Yuletide, he said, the foundation also holds diverse educative events during Easter and August break.
“Basically, the activities are geared towards team spirit, problem solving, goal setting, paying attention to details, friendship, early savings, ethics, morals and so on.
The IQ games, word search game, puzzling were used to expose the children to different problem solving opportunities and skills; getting them to think outside the box.
“Spelling and reading activities was to encourage reading habits, pay attention to details and stimulate the formation of group reading/study groups. The treasure hunt is another fun learning game that is of great interest – the last girl/boy standing and the winners of the treasures will also go home with awards,” he said.
Observing that children are effective instruments in nation building, Ariori said, the foundation “is determined to protect, train and mentor them for a better society”, while urging corporate bodies and well-meaning Nigerians to support courses and charities that focused on child development.
He added: “When we take a step to securing the lives of others, then the light shines brighter and connects with the future we hope for.
We also hope to intensify our schools partnership efforts, especially the visit and support for low cost schools to appreciate them for their efforts in getting the children off the street, thereby, reducing out of school children, reducing the number of street urchins and possible potential thugs.”
Consequently, during one of the days, Mrs Mojiba Hamsat from Access Bank interacted with the children on the “saving attitude seminar”.
She spoke on the importance of “setting aside a part of our funds”, “where such should be kept to earn interest”, “the minimum requirement” and the importance of being consistent in saving to enjoy the benefits towards investment”.
Four of children who answered questions correctly were rewarded with “ piggy banks” and a book on piggy bank.
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