A non-governmental organization, Jela’s Development Initiative has trained about thirty teachers across various schools in the sixteen Local Government Areas of Kwara State on mental health awareness and advocacy for effective curriculum delivery.
Programmes Officer of the organization, Rita Akhabue and other organizers noted that the training is hinged on the conviction that the mental health of teachers is key to driving quality curriculum delivery in the overall benefit of students.
Available data show that the training which involved selected teachers with conversation around mental health and its critical role in ensuring quality service delivery is still quite low, therefore awareness campaign is needed to bridge this gap amongst the teachers to prepare them for the real task of delivering quality curriculum.
Some of the participants who described the training as timely, believe that such capacity exposure will go a long way to impact on their delivery in classes.
The organizers while calling for attitudinal change amongst citizens regarding mental health awareness advocacy, decried the low level of government interest on the issue.
(Editor: Ken Eseni)