Hello folks!
We’re ending the month of May by beginning a lovely series which will be a regular on the blog. While this site generally accounts for the activities Better Breed Cameroon, we also have the objective of promoting people or initiatives which exemplify our hope for more and better youth development. So every once in a while we’ll take our own works off the stage to shine the spotlight on other associations, other efforts and particularly other young people admirably contributing towards a vision in line with ours: creating a Better Breed of Cameroonian citizens and leaders. The first recipient of our humble spotlight is the amazing Project Ignition.
What you need to know about Project Ignition
By Carlson Nkwain
Project Ignition is a movement aimed at promoting academic excellence by empowering students against examination anxiety, stress and fear.
In our society the status of young lives are greatly determined by academic performance, and in turn academic performance and intelligence are gauged by the frequent examinations. Hence examinations have ability to make or break you- forming the basis of the self judgement, aspirations etc. and often arouse fear and anxiety in young people.
Most students under perform not because they are lazy or lack intelligence, but because they are victims of examination anxiety. As a result of poor academic performance, there is an increase in school dropout rate as well as suicidal thoughts and other desperate actions.
Conscious of the societal impact of academic performance and keen on promoting industrious individuals, the Project Ignition Team under the sponsorship of Dr. SEA™ organized empowerment sessions in five secondary schools in and around Bamenda. This was to enable the students of the examination classes of these institutions have a better understanding and overcome examination anxiety with other challenges. The ultimate aim was to aid the students achieve the best possible results, hence the slogan I Can, I Will, I Must Succeed #Unstoppable which was inscribed on the t-shirts and banner.
The empowerment sessions lasted from the 16th-18th of May 2016 and they took place on the campuses of Acha Baptist College, Belo; Comprehensive High School, Bambui; St Frederick’s Comprehensive College, Mankon; Baptist High School, Mankon and Nacho Comprehensive College, Atuakom.
The sessions comprised of talks and focused groups. The talks were from the team speakers and were centered on; management of fear and anxiety, overcoming past failures, dealing with distractions and time management and prioritization. The focus groups were to tackle the personal challenges of the students at a more personal level. Each student was presented with a Project Ignition Examination Creed to ignite them by boosting their self-confidence maintaining high spirits as they strive to achieve the best possible results. At the end of the 3 day working session, more than 500 examination students were ignited by the Project Ignition team.
Project Ignition is inspired by the personal experience of Nkwain Carlson, the coordinator of the project. Five years ago, he while a candidate at the GCE Adavance Levels, he literally gave up after writing the first paper because of a crippling fear of failure. The team is made of Momo Betrand, Nkwain Gwana and Njong Jessica who all used their personal experiences to aid the students. This was the very first edition of Project Ignition and given their remarkable impact it will definitely not be the last. It is hoped that by addressing fear and anxiety issues, the team will promote academic excellence as well as students mental and emotional health, thus contributing to the personal development of young people.
This endeavor is the epitome of young people identifying a problem (out of their personal experience) and setting out to address this problem. THIS IS THE BETTER BREED! We’re proud of what these young people are doing to encourage and inspire other young Cameroonians.
Contact them via
Nkwain Carlson
+237674390116
www.nkwaincarlson.wordpress.com
Find them on Facebook: Project Ignition Cameroon
