Youths were engaged on digital content design aimed at promoting resource optimization and sustainable peace for environmental resilience.

The digital content design training targets young people to ensure they lead advocacy efforts that counter negative narratives and promote peace and environmental sustainability.

Our correspondent reports that the pilot programme under Dilimi Progress Project,saw 30 participants each from Plateau and Kaduna States which would be running concurrently.

Speaking during the official commencement of the training on Friday in Jos, Project Coordinator for the Dilimi Prosper Project, Janice Malakai, revealed they were here for the ongoing workshop with a new set of advocates who will carry the message of environmental resilience and sustainability across Plateau State.

"Plateau State has suffered a lot of environmental-related conflicts, and it’s time we begin to change the narrative. The conflicts are not only religious or ethnic—there is also a bigger problem related to scarce resources, climate change, and climate-related actions.

"People need to begin seeing the situation from that perspective. A shift in thinking and narrative is necessary."

The Project Coordinator further confirmed that the approach towards actualising the programme is through digital platforms, "which we believe young people are already maximizing. The same channels where misinformation and harmful content spread can also be used to promote messages of peace. 
"Young people are often at the forefront of both positive and negative movements, including violent conflicts. So, we are equipping them to use the same tool—social media—for social good.Using digital platforms to promote positive change is the heart of this strategy", she added.

Shedding more lights on the rationale behind the workshop, John Ret, Programme Officer—for Engaging Borders Africa, said we also call ourselves Engaging Borders SRD, and SRD stands for Strategy, Research and Development.

According to him, looking at how we arrived at this point as a society—both in Plateau State and in Nigeria more broadly—we felt this project was necessary to engage young people differently.

The core objective is to address issues around resource mobilisation and distribution, peace, resilience, and tolerance in a way that speaks directly to young people.

"We are doing that by taking these young people through online multiple open courses—MOOCs—so that eventually they will learn how to design and develop digital content that reflects themes like environment, peacebuilding, resilience, and tolerance. The goal is that when you go online, you find content that unites us instead of content that divides us.

"We have participants from diverse communities and backgrounds. People from across the country live here, and we made sure our selection reflected that diversity including persons with disability.We selected young people from five local government areas—Barkin Ladi, Bassa, Jos North, Jos South, and Riyom as women have 60 percent participation."

The programme officer also opined that the project is sponsored by the United Kingdom,UK, government through SPRING. SPRING is an international NGO working in Nigeria, and it operates across different states.

He said this is the first cohort as they intend to expand the project to other local governments.