PROGRAMS AND EVENTS
Date: June 29, 2007
Venue: American Corner, Bauchi
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| An appreciative American Corner member presents an award (carved map of Bauchi State) to Ms. Atim Eneida George, Country Public Affairs Office, US Embassy, Abuja. | Full size |
On Thursday, June 29, US Embassy Abuja Country Public Affairs Officer, Atim Eneida George toured the “Iya Abubakar Community Resource Center for the North East” located in Bauchi which hosts the American Corner. This Resource Center is the venue of the Embassy’s outreach programs to promote understanding of the United States in the predominantly Muslim populations of north eastern Nigeria. The Center inaugurated on June 2, 2003 is one of six CRCs in Nigeria, a project of the Education for Development and Democracy Initiative. This interagency partnership between the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps, and the Departments of Education and Agriculture, collaborates with the Nigerian public and private sectors on a wide variety of mutually beneficial projects.
The Bauchi CRC has become self-sustaining, expanded its teaching classes, acquired new computers and increased its clientele by over 50%. The numbers of computers in use at the center have increased from 41 in 2003 to 128 by June 2007. In addition to its outreach activities, the centre has also built a borehole with its own funds to ensure constant water supply, and customized its training to fit the needs of the different segments of the north east population including programs for the physically-challenged, business executives, a summer program for kids, and skills teaching and a computer appreciation program for women who have no formal education. The Iya Abubakar Community Resource Center has truly proved itself as a center of excellence for IT skills acquisition, and its best practices modules are helping other CRCs.
