Human Development Initiatives (HDI) Child Helpline, a partner of Child Helpline International; organized a workshop tagged “Negative and Positive uses of ICTs”. Thirty (30) students and Ten (10) Counsellors/ Teachers from different Secondary Schools, attended the programme.
The programme was held on Tuesday, 17th of May 2011, at the Centre for Educational Technology University of Lagos, Nigeria.
A presentation was made by the Executive Director of Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TECH) Miss Oreoluwa Somolu. In her presentation, she spoke about the concept of ICT, the importance of ICT for youths; how to communicate using ICT tools, the risks involved in unhealthy use of ICT, and finally, she talked about being SMART an acronym which stands for:
S- Be Safe, don’t give out personal information
M- Never Meet up with an online friend,
A- Accepting false emails can be dangerous,
R- Reliability,
T- Tell Someone.
Group counselling sessions was also held and reproductive health related issues were discussed. Educating Children/Teenagers has been a core part of HDI Project, and with this programme the children were enlightened on how they can seek help with the use of these ICTs when faced with violence or challenge and how to use ICT positively.
