YOUTH OF EXCELLENCE STRIDES (YES) AWARD 2022
PAANEAH FOUNDATION is an indigenous non-governmental adolescent and youth focused organisation and in line with its mission “to catalyse, promote, and support the development and well-being of adolescents and youths, particularly the most vulnerable groups, so as to attain excellence in every dimensions of life”, held her annual “Youth of Excellence Strides” (YES) Award programme on February 25th, 2020.
The YES Award programme is an annual programme designed to encourage youths to strive and work hard to attain excellence and also encourage outstanding students to keep working hard.
As usual, the programme started with an impromptu speech on the theme “Transition” which we adopted from the up-coming Adolescent health week theme coming up in March, 2022. Twelve schools (4 junior and 6 senior and 2 combined secondary schools) participated in the impromptu speech activity. Two judges, among which was the representative from the Zonal Education Office (Mr Okunade) in Ota did justice to listening and giving marks based on performance while it was moderated by the organisations’ programmes personnel. The competition was keenly competed for and emerged winners were announced and presented prizes alongside the Awardees of the day.
The Chairman of the event, in person of Lion Waheed Kadiri, a renowned Lawyer and passionate lover of good works gave a speech after the CEO, Professor Adesegun Fatusi rendered a welcome address.
The Master of Ceremony for the day swung into action and duly followed the agenda, hence all items on the agenda were executed. One of the highlights of the event included the presentation by 2 cultural troupes from a junior and senior school (AUD junior, Ota and Iganmode senior Schools respectively) in Ota.
The high point of the event was the presentation of Awards to the overall best 3 students of the 2019/2020 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) across public secondary schools in Ado-Odo, Ota LGA.
Awardees were called forward for recognition and have been given award certificates and cash prizes at their respective schools in other to encourage other students to admire and emulate hard-work.
Iyesi Ota High School which presented two (1st and 3rd ) of the best three was promised a whopping #200,000 worth of prize money and this has equally been presented to the school. Other prizes promised were to each of the schools that presented the cultural troupe; Iganmode Senior grammar school troupe received #100,000 and AUD junior School received #50,000 as well. As of the time of putting this report together, all prizes promised to both students and schools have been fulfilled in the presence of the students and staff members of the schools concerned (AUD Comprehensive School Ota is however yet to present the school’s account details but we are at alert to receive their account details and respond accordingly as other criteria of putting forward what the cash prize will be used for has been forwarded to our organisation) and we have pictorial evidences and transfer receipt evidences to show. To get the best 3 students, grades of all results received from a total of seven junior and combined schools in Ado-odo Ota were assigned marks. Mathematics and English language A grades were assigned 10marks, while other subjects A grades were given 5marks, and all C grades irrespective of subject were assigned 2marks. The highest score was 43 marks, followed by 40 and 38 respectively.
The event which started at 10am prompt ended at about 1:30pm with various group photography sessions.