Jela’s Development Initiatives, JDI, a nonprofit organisation, in partnership with the TY Danjuma Foundation has concluded four-day teachers training for public secondary school teachers in Abuja, under a project titled ‘Teacher Training, Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy for Effective Curriculum Delivery in Public Schools in the FCT’.
The Founder of JDI, Angela Ochu-Baiye, a Mandela Washington Fellow and Lead Collaborator in Vote023 project, disclosed this in a statement on Thursday.
Ochu-Baiye revealed that JDI was commissioned by the TY Danjuma Foundation to execute the project with the goal of enhancing access to quality education by improving the standard of teaching in the FCT.
She said: “This project seeks to address the challenges of ineffective teaching methods, poor understanding of mental health, lack of cooperation and knowledge sharing amongst teachers, lack of conducive work environment and insufficient instructional materials in public schools in the FCT.
“The focus of this project on mental health will improve teachers’ creativity and efficiency in the classroom as well as their mental fortitude. It will also create a platform for teachers to share their experiences with one another for peer-to-peer learning”.
CEO, TY Danjuma Foundation, Mr Gima Forje, asserted: “There’s a big mental health awareness gap in our society. So, we at TY Danjuma Foundation thought an effective approach to fill this gap was by targeting teachers through robust, bespoke trainings to improve curriculum delivery and teaching outcomes. Hence, the partnership with JDI, an organisation that has credible antecedents in this project area”.
It was gathered that part of the objectives of the project is to build the capacity of forty teachers in the FCT on improved pedagogy methods for increased classroom impact, and provide access to basic mental healthcare as well as create awareness on the subject matter for effective curriculum delivery amongst the teachers in the targeted areas.
The project, partitioned into four key activities of teacher training, provision of basic mental healthcare, establishment and management of Telegram Teacher Community, media engagement/advocacy and strategic stakeholder meetings with policy makers, flagged off a recently penned 5-year social development partnership between JDI and the TY Danjuma Foundation. A mental health report on teachers will be released at the end of the project.
JDI is a non-profit registered in Nigeria in 2019, to provide opportunities for any individual-irrespective of beliefs, gender or socio-economic background- to access potable water as well as sanitation and hygiene facilities, voluntary blood donors and mental healthcare while creating platforms for youth empowerment through volunteering.
The organisation created J Blood Match, an app that connects unpaid blood donors with those in need of blood.
