Retired Principal Delta State University Secondary School, and Superintendent, Delta Central District, Children Evangelism Ministry INT’L, Delta State, Evangelist Mrs. Doris .O. Umukoro has said that teenagers need to be coached and equipped to deal with life issues, expressing optimism that they could be repositioned to be agents of change through knowledge.
Addressing news men recently at the ongoing children holiday camp being held at the Headquarters of Heroes Of Faith School Ughelli, Evangelist Doris Umukoro said that the threat of disowning teenagers when they commit any offence by parents is no longer a parenting strategy rather parents and guardian have to be involved and intentional with their teenagers.
According to her, “The three day event, with the theme “Making Wise Choices”, featuring bible lessons, games, talent hunt, talks, workshop, workbook activities, film show, puppet show and lots more is for children of ages 5-12.
“The society is so bad because children are not brought up the way they ought to be brought up and because of that, you have kidnappers, yahoo boys, prostitutes, strippers, teen porn stars etc. If they have the fear of the Lord, they will not do those things.
“My children grew up in children holiday camps, and by the grace of God I have a lawyer, doctor and an engineer today. Whenever the camps are coming up, the children get so excited, two weeks to the time they are already packed and prepared to leave because if your child attend the camp once they will love to attend the camp every time because they gain so much. They are always trained and equipped with tools to make right choices and live productive lives.
“So, it is very important that parents should release their children to hear these teachings, so that they can grow up well. In addition to camps, we hold school outreaches. We have gone to over 50 schools this session mostly public schools. Some private school proprietors also invited us to their school when they heard about what we do in those schools visited.
Continuing, she said “The topic of our seminar is ‘My Tomorrow Shall Be Great’ there are pathways to greatness; there are also pathways that take you away from your greatness. And when you teach these children emotional intelligence, Sometimes, they confess some of the things they did in Ignorance, children in primary schools are having sex here and there.
“A friend or classmate just walked up to most of them and asked, have you ever had sex before, let me teach you and out of ignorance, they were lured into having sex. Teenagers are going through a lot so let us coach them in the language they understand and equip them with tools to help them deal with these life issues. We will teach them the word, we will feed them, they will interact, in fact one of the things CEM is doing is breaking the barriers of church.
“Most times people say ‘I attend so so Church I do not want my children to mix up with people from that church’ but when the children come to the camp they always want to relate with those people and the kind of relationship they form is not the kind that will take them into yahoo and all that. It is relationship in a godly way. The children always break the barrier of churches.
“Whether you attend Winners or Redeem, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. My advice to the parents is that they should release their children to be in any of the children holiday camps holding across the state because the camp is very useful to the children, because we train them to become agents of change. About security challenges, we never use a venue for our children holiday camps without a fence; we must be sure of a fence and proper security for the place; we have hostels for boys and hostel for girls.” She said
