The federal government, through its At Risk Children Programme (ARC-P), on Saturday, graduated no fewer than 500 facilitators in Gombe to address the increasing rate of out-of-school children in the state.

Speaking at the ceremony, Maryam Uwais, the Special Adviser to the President on Social Investments, said the initiative would solve the myriad issues affecting the enrolment of children in schools in the communities.

Ms Uwais, who said the 500 facilitators were expected to give a monthly report on the progress of each child under their care, urged the facilitators to help the children beyond acquisition of knowledge, to mentorship.

The Presidential adviser said, “I like to tell you that we have placed a lot of responsibility on you; you have been trained to handle the responsibility of other children beyond learning.

“You will take care of the children in your communities, you will be expected to not only supervise and teach them, you will also monitor them, you will mentor them.

“You will make sure you give us a report every month on how each and every child that has been assigned to you is progressing within your community.”

She described the tasks of the facilitators as huge but, “we feel this is the only way we can address the huge numbers of children that are out of school across the country.

“We need to create an army of capacity within the communities to see how we can support these children who, through no fault of theirs, are deprived of so many rights and protection.”

She noted that Gombe state would be used as a model for other states that had indicated interest to collaborate with the federal government in tackling issues affecting children across the country.

The ARC-P is geared towards improving the living conditions of street hawkers, orphans, people living with disability, survivors of child marriage, drug or substance abuse and internally displaced persons.

(NAN)