NGO Pushes for Quality Content in School Curriculum, Offers Free Training for Content Providers

Emma Okonji

A non-governmental organisation (NGO) that develops educational contents with entertainment for African schools, Ubongo, has stressed the need for quality content that is fused with entertainment and story telling that will enhance teaching and learning in schools.

Ubongo’s mission is to use top quality and localised edutainment to help African’s 500 million children learn, and leverage their learning to change their lives, through its radio and television programmes, including mobile phones broadcasting.

Speaking at a one day training workshop for content developers and educators in Lagos recently, organised by Ubongo, Head of Education and Research at Ubongo, Cliodhna Ryan, said the NGO was also using technology tools to develop digital contents and broadcast same through digital channels that would help enhance quality teaching and learning at schools.

Nigeria Adaptation Consultant for Ubongo, Mr. Olatayo Olaniyan, said the educational contents provided by Ubongo are in line with the government’s curriculum across Africa, aimed at developing the educational content across Africa, using locally sourced materials.

“As an edutainment company, Ubongo is careful at keeping abreast of the broadcasting codes and regulations that govern content in different African countries, including Nigeria, because from the beginning, the key partner for us has been the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and our content has gone through several levels of vetting from them, before broadcasting. NTA is a government owned broadcasting house with very stringent regulations, and they are keen at upholding the standard of education,”Olaniyan said.

Speaking about the one day training workshop in Lagos, the Director of Marketing and Communications at Ubongo, Iman Lipumba, said the training would give content developers and educators the support they needed to develop more educational contents that schools could adopt.

“We want to inspire a lot more edutainment interventions in Nigerian schools, and we are advocating for the return of quality content in school curriculum. We will continue to invest in order to increase the number of languages, including local languages, through which we can reach the schools. During the workshop, we identified the needs of content providers and trained them in that direction free of charge. The essence is to grow more partners that will be developing school contents that will support teaching and learning in schools,” Lipumba said.

During the training, participants were grouped and each group was made to identify some challenges in teaching and learning processes, and to develop solutions on how to address such challenges, through teaching that is combined with story telling and edutainment.

At the end of the one-day training workshop, participants were given certificate of participation. The participants expressed satisfaction about the training, and suggested that such training should be regular in order to keep abreast with modern technology that will enable them assist in building quality contents for schools.