Page 12 - INSIDE ACCESS

SUSTAINABILITY CORNER
Investing
in the Community
Capacity building is valuable and important because of its many long-term impacts. It encourages people to act and strengthens confidence. From a very young age, investments should be made in childhood development as this is important for a child's future development. Children with learning disabilities should not be denied access to quality education and training. They face multiple forms of discrimination, which leads to their exclusion from society and school.
Attitudes toward these vulnerable children, as well as a lack of resources to accommodate them, compound the challenges they face in accessing education. While a lack of access to schools is an issue, an equal concern is the inability of the education system
to ensure quality education for them. The key to this is having appropriate accommodations that will help these students access the general education curriculum in a way that makes the most sense to their individual needs.
Access Bank, as part of its goal to ensuring inclusive and quality education, partnered with the Centre for Youth Studies (CYS) to build the capacity of students with special needs in Kings and Queens College, Lagos State, Nigeria. The program was focused on empowering special needs students with life skill trainings required to build positive behaviors for academic excellence. Using a comprehensive approach, the trainings provided an opportunity
for them to actively learn and acquire skills as well as encouraged them to pursue professional development in the future.
The program featured a 10-week life skills online training and online elections into the executive body of the FTS CLUB for King's Junior and Senior College led by the school officers as a co-curriculum club. Over 129 lives were impacted by the life skills training to build positive character development amongst students with special needs.
PAGE 12 INSIDE ACCESS | SEPTEMBER 2020 4TH EDITION