Center for Individual and Child Development held her 5th Annual Workshop on the 4th of August at The Business Hub of Sterling Bank Ikeja.

The theme was Fostering National Unity And Oneness Workshop. It was a build up on our 2022 workshop ‘Finding Your Voice; Making it Count’ where participants understood that they had the power to amplify their voice on certain social issues such as injustice, taking ownership and building allies who would work with them in ensuring that together their voice count; but what happens when their voice is ignored and certain issues that are pain points which hurts our national unity are raised in the bid to divide and halt the progress made?

This, was what this workshop addressed. Amb. Olufunmi Olaosun spoke on Sieving Through the Noise and Bridging Gaps Across Groups this she explained using the acronym SVG Stop to think before sharing any information, ask yourself, am I sharing this information to cause agitation? Verify – where did this information come from? Get Facts – look at the context in which the message is shared.

Coach Alfa Abena spoke on Social Media Addiction & Finding Productivity in the Noise. He shared on the effects of social media and how it affects us daily, we need to create a system around the use of social media so we don’t get swept away with the emotional tide of social media.

The Executive Director for Centre for Individual and Child Development Chizoba Akunne spoke on Emotional healing: Finding forgiveness. She said that Nigeria has about 525 languages and there has always been an underlying tribal tension in Nigeria but as Youths, we need to question the voices of these tensions to discover the how and why. This way, we discover that tribal biases are personal and are not the total truth. She shared personal experiences to show participants that every tribe and state in Nigeria is unique and our growth as a group, communicates, individual states and nation comes from recognising this truth. Also we need to seek for healings for our individual hurts and let go so we can find and unplug every blockage to their creativity preventing us from living our best lives.

There was a ground zero session where participants were able to share biases they’ve held onto and gain clarity on how and why those biases were formed. They were able to build mental systems to combat external and internal biases that would try to disrupt our National pride, unity and oneness.

Some of the workshop sponsors were NBC, A&P foods, NEC, Women Connect, Topple, Mr Wilson Akpan, Core Concepts, and our Board members Dr Uzoma Ajegbo & Mrs Kehinde Leoto.