“International Day of the Girl Child,” themed “Digital Generation. Our Generation.”

This intervention was in celebration of the “International Day of the Girl Child,” themed “Digital Generation. Our Generation.” 

The program was attended by 113 female students from the 20 High Schools (Senior and Junior) in Education District II, Mende, Maryland, Lagos, Nigeria.

It explored two areas:

• Information technology potentials, importance, and possibilities of female student.
• Drug literacy education to keep the girls of the initiation of substance use.

The girls were encouraged to embrace technological subjects that can improve on their possibilities in tech careers.

On the drug prevention, the children were taken through drug use and the brain, the reasons why adolescents are more vulnerable to risky behaviours such as substance use. The teen brain development, that the brain is not fully developed not till an individual is 25 years. There were also taken through the etiology of substance use: on how the macro level and micro level environments form a person personal characteristic which would equates the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour.

These teaching were link to how a student may perceive substance use in the community. The students were trained on skills that can help stay substance free.

• Decision making skills
• Assertiveness
• Resistance/refusal skills

Finally, the students were encouraged to take the Drug Free Pledge and were give a take home assignment on “The Abstinence Box,” to be supervised by their teachers from time.

At the end of the programs, all the 113 participants were gifted a pack of Sanitary Pad to reduce the stress of period poverty for vulnerable girls in Nigeria.