Some youths from Port Harcourt, Rivers State, have resorted to using creative art to facilitate youth leadership development, social mobilisation and cross-culture dialogue for social transformation.
Showcasing their talents through songs, poems, drama, dance and spoken word, the youths, numbering 33, having undergone a four-week boot camp on how to use their creativity to advocate for youth civic engagement, environmental sustainability and gender equality, promised to use their talents to build more human capacity.
Coordinator of the Advocacy Project, Rita Ezenwa Okoro, who is the Founder and lead visioner of Street Project Foundation, spoke about how the 33 youths were picked and groomed to use their talents to project the repression by the government to Nigerian youths.
Ezenwa-Okoro said: “We thought about the fact that since we are living in a repressive society, and having young people on the street protesting about social justice, it has become insecure and unsafe. We, therefore, recognised that art is the best way to make sure the voices of young people are heard.
“I believe very much in the power of creative art for social transformation. For the last four weeks, we have been here in Port Harcourt to activate 33 young people who would start what we call the advocacy movement, which started in Abuja 2021.”
Ezenwa-Okoro said that the movement was inspired by what happened on October 20, 2020, the EndSARS protest that led to the massacre of young people in the country, saying that they aim to grow a 3,000 young people movement, who believe in the use of their creativity to speak out about the social injustice in the country.
