Centre trains over 200,000 girls on AI

The Centre for Girls’ Education (CGE), Zaria, Kaduna State, has empowered over 200,000 vulnerable girls with skills and set venture into free artificial intelligence (AI) training to enable the beneficiaries to harness their potentials.

Hajiya Habiba Mohammed, the director of CGE, made this known in an interview with the newsmen on Thursday in Zaria.

Mohammed said that the centre has positively touched the lives of over 200,000 girls in its project, including Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Kebbi, and Borno States.

She added that the centre was also working to venture into AI training for its girls; the centre attended a programme in Qatar, and planning has reached an advanced stage on how to integrate its beneficiaries into AI.

“We are targeting many beneficiaries of the project from our project states for the AI we are also seeking additional support from donor agencies on this initiative,’’ she added.

She noted that over 6,000 married adolescent girls benefitted under the MASS project, adding that many of them are on the verge of writing their senior secondary school examinations this year.

“The MASS project beneficiaries were supported with training on life and vocational skills to enable them to take decisions on whether to go back to school or continue with the skills they acquired from the centre.

“We believe that a scholarship from the government to them (adolescent married girls) can help them to re-write their narratives and be what they want to be even after the early marriage,’’ she said.

Mohammed said that beside the MASS project, the centre’s Pre-School Space (PSS) has reached over 4,000 pupils, aged between four and six years, and prepared them for formal education.

She added that the centre had also trained over 2,000 students under its Girls for Education and Health Project (G4E&H), which target female students of senior secondary schools.

“Under the G4E&H project, the beneficiaries were groomed by the centre to enable them to to obtain entry requirementss for the study of health and science-related courses in tertiary institutions.

“The main objective of the the G4E&H project is to address the dearth of human resources for health and science teachers in the country,’’ the director said.

Mohammed said the centre was also working in collaboration with the Kaduna State Ministry of Business Innovation, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, and the and the Vocational Centre of the the Islamic Trust of Nigeria to support girls in learninging skills in ICT and other vocations.

She, therefore, restated the commitment of the centre to work closely with its partners towards ensuring more vulnerable girls were reached.

In 2024, the major goal of the centre was to work with the government and ensure that the centre’s safe spaces were institutionalised into schoolss.

This, she said, would enable the beneficiaries of the initiatives to have a skill; our belief was that when these girls had life skills,, they would stay in school and focus on where they wanteded to be tomorrow.