The ExxonMobil in collaborative efforts with the Nigeria Basketball Association(NBA) in a Power Forward Youth programme has sensitized and created awareness on danger and prevention of malaria in a bid to end the scourge at the community levels
The Power Forward Youth Summit which marked the 2023 World Malaria Day was in partnership with PanAfricare to celebrate 10th year of implementation in the FCT and as it is currently being implemented in 40 schools, with 8100 direct beneficiaries.
The NBA Africa Vice President and Country Head of Nigeria, Gbemisola Abudu, while speaking to journalists pointed out that sport especially basketball is one of the ways NBA and the partners can use to educate the youth about malaria.
She said ” The whole idea of the program is making the power of sports to educate the youth about malaria awareness and prevention.”
“One thing about sports as you are aware of, is that sports is a tool that the youth resonate with in a way while they do other activities. Being able to utilize that power to educate them about thier health issues is very important has been a key cornerstone of this partnership for us.”
“The youths health issues that is very important has been a key cornerstone of this partnership for us. So the program has in the past 10 years, reached over 200,000 (two hundred thousand), youths in Abuja.”
She also disclosed that the program started out well reaching only 30 schools they have been able to take the program to 42 schools across FCT Abuja.
“That’s very impactful because one of the great things about the programming is apart from Malaria we think about sports, what makes sport so powerful is that we are using this program to equip our youths, with live skills that are going to be instrumental to thier growth”.
“This means from collaboration skills, to listening skills, to critical skills, this are all skills that are defined as the future of work skills so whether the kids become professional in basketball or they end up doing anything else this are skills that will stay with them for the rest of thier lifetime.”
The Country Director of Pan Africare, Mr Patrick Adah, explained 40 coaches was engaged to teach the students basketball and during the short time they have to rest, they talk about malaria.
He said students have been trained on malaria and they regards some as malaria champions among the students.”
“It’s malaria prevention, you actually need to know what malaria is spread, how malaria is transmitted from one person to the other in order for you to prevent it and know the appropriate way of preventing it.
“The training is mainly on malaria prevention, as we also show them how to treat malaria, because you know you prevent using the long lasting insecticidal net, ensuring that they have the message to give to others through education, letting them know and also they tell thier parents at home that they need to sleep inside the net.” He added.
He also disclosed that the Power Forward Programme uses four throng approaches to address malaria intervention in Schools such as awareness creation, raising Malaria Champion Among Students, LLINs Distribution to Students and Organizing Student-led Malaria Community Activities
According to him, “the project utilizes the convening power of basketball to train students, to bring out the best in them and educate them on life skills that will make them better citizens anywhere they find themselves.
“It is also used to create awareness on some public health interventions, especially malaria”.
“The Power Forward Youth Summit is one of the series of activities to celebrate the 10th year implementation of the Power Forward Programme in schools in the FCT and also to mark the 2023 World Malaria Day.”
“We focus on malaria because this is the disease that ExxonMobil, our funding partner is making serious efforts to address in Africa using very unique approaches”. He added.