A Youth Empowerment Seminar took place at UPNG today with the aim of influencing social change.
The seminar will go on for eight weeks starting with today as the first seminar.
Facilitator of the seminar, Mr Nigel Akuani, said that the main purpose of this seminar is to teach young people to become critical consumers of information rather than being mere observers that passively absorb every bit of information presented.
“The seminar itself is basically to inform youths on the need to always question every information they absorb and to give them the ability to distinguish between facts from fake news and more importantly to instill in them the need to become proactive.”
Mr Akuani, a youth coordinator attached with the Catholic Bishops Conference said that he took up this initiative because he believes that young people can be dynamic and powerful if properly harnessed and given the right forms of platforms and opportunities to build themselves.
“In my line of work, I work closely with youths and students and in my experience from travelling around parts of PNG, I’ve seen that youths can make a difference.”
Akuani said that this is a capacity-building training program for youths which will help aspire them to become leaders.
The session today covered a number of topics needed to positively build a youth followed by a three-speaker panel including Mr Akuani himself.
Akuani encouraged both youths and adults to join in this session and to also join in on the other sessions that will be taking place over the next eight weeks.