Africa Family Life Federation (AFLF), has selected Nigeria to be among the six countries in Africa to benefit from one of its newly adopted programmes namely ALIVE TO THE WORLD (ATW).

Alive to the World is a complete program for character and personality development for children and adolescents. It was conceived and developed to follow and enhance the natural stages of childhood and adolescence, and to be used in classrooms with roles for parents to play at home, from primary one to the last year of secondary school. It is based on scientific research, universal and human basic values as well as the Golden rule.

The country Coordinator, Rev Sister Marie Kelechi Agugo, RSC, a Religious Sister of Charity made this known in an exclusive interview with CEOAFRICA at the sideline of the training of the Country trainers’ workshop organised by AFLFwith the support of Hungary Helps at the Carmelites community Ibadan, Nigeria.

According to her, ATW uses a continuous story of Charles, his cousin Alice and their varied group of friends and companions. It progresses through all the levels and stages of development, as they encounter the various situations of everyday life which are common to most young people today.

This interesting story leads the students to examine their options and choices in a realistic and appropriate context for each age. They consider issues such as friendship, peer pressure, relations with their parents, romance, sexuality, love, marriage and the application of values such as loyalty, teamwork, personal responsibility, respect for property towards their ambitions. Experiencing these situations in the third person of a varied group of characters gives them great freedom to develop as unique personalities, without stereotyping and free of judgmental bias.

Results in a growing number of countries show that Alive to the World® students truly desire to understand and live the universal values as they become aware that they are part of a coherent system, make sense and most importantly, that they open up a world of possibilities for issues related to health, happiness and progress.

In her words, “The programme is capable of addressing the challenges and ills that plague our country today such as value-free system, insecurity, lack of peace, injustice that has led so many families to live in abject poverty; as well as improvethe educational and literacy levels in the country. I see it as a programme that would restore peace in Nigeria because it involves the family which is cell unit of the society, the educational system and faith-based organisations.

She added that “all the militarization of everywhere, politicization of everything would not help us but value-based education that leads children to building attitudes of virtues such as respect for life, caring for one another, etc.Would go a long way to makingour society just, peaceful and progressive, a country where all Nigerians would happily call their own.I believe Alive to the World is capable of doing it.”

Rev Sister Agugo said the workshop is for the training of the country trainers. These trainers would in turn go and train some selected teachers from selected schools in the Catholic diocese of Gboko in Benue State which is the only diocese chosen so far in Nigeria for the implementation of the Alive to the World program.

She explained that Alive to the World programme can only begin with six countries in Africa because of funding. Three Anglophone countries and three francophone countries. The Anglophone countriesare Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. So this particular Online workshop is for thethree countries. The programme itself is going to focus on children of ages 6 to 18 years, that is; those in primary one to senior secondary school (SSS3) students in accord with the Nigerian system.

“Every Nigerian child should benefit from the programme but it demands resources. Resources to train the teachers and buy the books. I would encourage our Catholic education authorities and indeed the Ministries of Education and Human Services at both State and Federal levels to explore and invest in Alive to the World for the benefit of our children and the Society in general”.

On his part, Rev Father Emmanuel Doki, of the Catholic diocese of Gboko who is also the Diocesan Coordinator for the Family and Human Life unit said the workshop is so timely considering what the country is witnessing with the behavior of youths who are the future generation.

“It would have come up earlier than now going by the local challenges we have in relation to value, to add value to the life of our youths. I think it is also an effort in the right direction”.

“The general complaints in Nigeria today are just about delinquent youths. It does appear that our morals have become very low and the enforcer – the Church does not enjoy the needed freedom to discharge its duties. I believe, this workshop would serve an impetus to improve and equip the Church in the discharge of their duties,” he added.

The Diocesan Country trainer from the diocese of Gboko and Secretary for the Family and Human Life, Hyacinth Kaai, said the workshop has come at the right time considering the fact the country has gone astray in time of values.

According to him, “there is a general consensus as it seems there is a disconnect between the family and the society because of the characters that are being exhibited by our youths,” which is what this workshop sets out to correct.

The workshop is a five-day event to prepare the trainers to face the challenges ahead of training the teachers, who in turn will teach the children in the pre-selected schools.