Online Training for ArOY Campaign Personnel Introduced: Piloting of Courses Completed Ahead of Nationwide Roll-out in Nigeria

The OCI Foundation is pleased to announce that it will now switch fully to online modalities for all its training workshops ahead of the nationwide roll-out of the Arm Our Youths (ArOY) Health Campaign.

In preparation for this, it has designed three (3) free-to-do courses, two of which has been piloted in the last 2 weeks of March (16th to 31st), 2021. A total of twelve (12) staff volunteers from a number of the Foundation’s locations in Nigeria took part in this piloting.

The piloting was designed to identify the ease of use, adaptability, and potential technical issues that might affect the online trainings, and have them all addressed before the full roll-out.

Among the 3 courses, each of which has a certificate available to the participant on completion, are:

1. COURSE 1: Training for “TEACHERS” of the ArOY Health Campaign;
2. COURSE 2: Training for “MONITORS” of the ArOY Health Campaign; and
3. COURSE 3: Training for NYSC officers (still being developed as at early April 2021).

The pieces of feedback received were awesome, and the Foundation’s Australian-based IT team is already working on implementing them. The OCI Foundation is committed to delivering the highest quality anti-cancer services to Nigerians, and will do so by using the highest quality tools available. This online innovation, and the associated piloting, is all part of this commitment.

It should be noted that the ArOY Campaign is a novel, Harvard-endorsed, WHO-supported, and evidence-based health promotion initiative of the OCI Foundation, which is being introduced across all senior secondary schools in Nigeria as a way of tackling breast and cervical cancers. In September 2019, it was rolled out across all the 261 senior secondary schools in Anambra State of Nigeria, and a similar event, scheduled for Benue State in May 2020, was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  All of Nigeria’s 36 states (and the FCT) are expected to benefit from the ArOY campaign on or before the end of 2025, and the ongoing consultations are part of this whole process.

The ArOY Health Campaign has the support of the, NextGenU.org (the World’s first online University), the United States Centers for Disease Control (U.S. CDC) and the University of British Columbia, Canada (ranked 45^th in the world, according to the 2021 QS World University Ranking). Experts from these institutions, along with others from the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) and the Griffith University (Australia), will work with the OCI Foundation and the Nigerian Government on the roll-out, implementation and monitoring of the ArOY project. In addition, the prestigious Harvard Medical School, USA, of which Dr Chris Ifediora (the Founder of the OCI Foundation) is an Alumnus of, had earlier endorsed the Campaign, and made significant contributions to the Campaign’s design ahead of its roll out in Anambra State last year.

A number of other reputable Nigerian institutions partnering the OCI Foundation on this initiative include the Innoson Group, the NYSC (National Office), the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs (Nigeria),  Nigeria’s National Orientation Agency (NOA), the Federal Ministry of Health (Nigeria), Nollywood Nigeria, the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS), Silk Road Restaurant (Abuja), and the Post Primary Schools Service Commission, PPSSC (Anambra state), among others.

There are also plans to involve the Office of the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the Nigeria’s Governor’s Forum (which includes the Governors of all the 36 States of Nigeria), and Nigeria’s ministries of Health, Education and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).