NCWD holds women, girls’ summit in Abuja

As part of efforts to consolidate on the successes recorded in the 2014 edition of the Women and Girls’ summit, the National Centre for Women Development (NCWD) is convening the 2015 edition which will hold on October 13 and 15 at the headquarters of the NCWD in Abuja.

This year’s edition with the theme: “Empowerment and Training: Innovating for Girl-Child Education”, was chosen as a deliberate plan in the pursuit of programmes to enhance the quality of the contributions of Nigerian Women to national development, according to a statement from the centre.

Director General of NCWD, Lady Onyeka Onwenu, said in Abuja at the weekend that the summit was hinged on the United Nations Declaration of December 11, 2011 which instituted the International Day of the Girl-Child. She noted that the declaration was to bring to the fore, the challenges faced by the girl-child and other issues such as genderbased violence.

Areas to be covered in this year’s summit according to a statement from Onwenu’s Media Assistant, Ewache Ajefu include developing a strong girl-child education policy, peace building, streamlining economic empowerment programmes for women and girls, preventing gender based violence, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS) and empowerment and training for rehabilitation.

The key objectives of the summit according to Lady Onwenu are to develop a platform for high level discourse on current issues affecting girl-child education in Nigeria, create avenue for economic empowerment for marginalized women and girls by focusing on education, violence and security.