Traders of hateful contents online continued to gather momentum as the elections drew closer and these contents are champion largely by youth who are the most active portion of the population.
This is part of the reason Grassroots Centre Africa came up with an initiative called #Tech4CommunityPeace which targets young people within communities at the bottom of the pyramid. Goal of this initiative is to turn youth to peace building champions, leveraging everaging on the power of technology tools.
Grassroots Centre Africa in collaboration with Cardinal Onayka Founadtion for Peace and Queen Amina Founadtion have on 7th and 8th days of January 2023 brought youth representatives from different various Community Based Organizations, students unions, ward development committees, farmers’ associations, peace building networks, entrepreneurs hub and religious based initiatives, among others to QAIC Conference Hall, Azare Bauchi State to have hands – on practical session on the use of technology tools to promote peace and development in their respective communities and the country at large.
While welcoming the participants at the event, Hassan Mohammed Chiroma, Senior Programs Officer at Grassroots Centre Africa highlighted the objectives of the gathering which include; training on the use of technology tools to promote peace, good governance and getting the best out of the internet and internet resources.
Speaking further, Mr. Hassa called on the participants to be attentive and tap all the technology skill sets that will be exhibited at the training ground.
Four technology stalls were stationed in the hall (The use of technology to fact – check, hateful content reporting on various social media platforms, internet safety and security, online storage and retrieval).
Participants were taken around the four stalls. So, in the end, all the participants were well equipped with the skills sets obtainable in all the four stalls. The sessions were very interesting and engaging as all the participants could relate the case studies used as examples.
Also speaking, Mr. Salisu Abdulahi, the Head of Queen Amina Foundation stressed that: As a Foundation we are so much interested in this as it directly aligns with our mandate, we will continue to support this initiative, Salisu added
One of the participants from Matsango ward said: this is the most impactful training session I attended in 5 years of my contact with the peace building effort. We need more of these ideas to make Nigeria a peace heaven for everyone.
At the end, an online group was set up for the trained champions for onward engagements.
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