NGO Educates Children At Christmas

As the society heads for all the odds in recent times, a Non-Governmental Organization, the Lifeboat Care and Empowerment Initiative, has traced cause of the increasing social vices to a denial of the rights attention to the child.
In a children – focused programme titled “Children: Arrows In God’s Quiver”, organised by the above organization last Wednesday, at Rumuewhor, Odegu, in Emohua Local Government Area, the President of the Lifeboat Care And Empowerment Initiative, Barrister (Mrs) Okogbule Vivian, who announced that the programme was informed by the need to catch the children young, said the younger generation has begun to toe the wrong path hence the need to redirect them as quickly as possible.
Addressing participants at the programme, Barrister Vivian called for a redirection and re-orientation of the Nigerian children with a view to making them realize that they are arrows in God’s hands and so must be sharpened to be able to hit the Lord’s target.
She made parents realize that they are the available tools with which the children could be sharpened and be made useful to their generation.
On the part of the children, the learned gentle lady said they must be voices to their generation, not to be echoes.
Meanwhile, the President of Flourishing Generation Youth Foundation, a Non Governmental Organization that sensitizes and rehabilitates drug addicts and cultists, Deaconess Harvestba Ibibo, has called on the children to shun drug addiction and cultism.
Using the platform provided by the Lifeboat Care and Empowerment Initiative, Deaconess Ibibo highlighted the disadvantages of drug addiction and involvement in cultism prevalent among the teenagers and youths.
She said it is only a conscious effort and determination which ofcourse must commence from their age as children that could make their case different.
She insists that the society would be a better place for all if the children could determine or be taught to resist any form of addiction and involvement in cultism.
She stressed that drugs do not only destabilize our body system, they kill it outrightly. “Take your life off drugs, else drugs will take your life from you” she added. She therefore enjoined mothers to train their children early enough so as to stop them from early drugging because it renders them useless.
On the need for the children to be guided against sexual abuse, Dr (Mrs) Ebi Akosubo, one of the resource persons at the occasion, took the children through incidences that could lure them to be sexually abused. Narrating the dangers of sexual abuse, she charged them to resist every form of molestation.
On hand also to educate the children on the dangers of violence was the Rivers State Youth Leader Girls Guildes, Bukky Blessing Abokirisika, who not only enumerated types of violence, but charged the children to always report cases of sexual abuse irrespective of who is involved.
It will be recalled that Lifeboat Care and Empowerment Initiative was birthed out of a vision received four years ago, precisely on December 26, 2015. According to the visioner, Barrister Okogbule Vivian, the outreach is being observed for the fourth time since inception.
The first an second year witnessed a religious crusade that gathered audience across all ages and sexes. The climax of the activities of the two years included a material ministration to widows.
The third year featured an empowerment programme tagged “Empowered to be productive in times like this”. Women and youths from Rumuewhor Community were trained on some skills capable of boosting their livelihood.
This year, the president explained, “our boat sailed to the children’s shore and I think for some time, our boat will remain with the children because we have come to realize that every misbehaviour begins from this age”.
Even though Barrister Vivian believes she made a huge success in her children outreach, like every other burden bearer, she also had some challenges to contend with.
“We saw lapses in the way they conduct themselves, lack of concentration, even though that is a known feature of children, it shows that we have more works to do”. She recounted.
Financially, the visioner does not have any donor agency to depend on but she is confident that the one who had commissioned her, will also empower her so her boat will neither sink nor capsize.
She therefore encourages as many as have had the call of God to serve humanity in any form not to fret, insisting that underneath the answer to calls, lies the peace of the missionary.

Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi