On Thursday, 4, 2019 I set out with two members of our team of volunteers, Ola Kazeem and Elizabeth Azubuike from our S.A.F.E™ Haven Lagos.

The mission was to take the #SAFE4MEEncounter under the #SAFE4MEMovement of our NGO, SAFE for Children Society. Our goal is to be in at least one school a month.

We had two destinations in mind. The first was IVY Premier College, Mushin and Queen’s College, Yaba.

Top on our mind is a commitment to engage these precious young ones for the sole purpose of empowering them and helping them to take responsibility for their inevitable roles in their PERSONAL SAFETY and SELF-PROTECTION. Our tool is simply POSITIVE VALUE SYSTEM orientation or reorientation.

The complexities of the 21st Century are not about to decrease…The truth is that despite all that we have seen, we have not seen anything yet. The only solution that works is for to accept in the words of Olakunle SORIYAN that what will come will come but it is who we are that makes all the difference.

It is not an easy time to be a child or young person. The distractions are here in their legions and the Fourth Industrial Revolution has crashed all bothers. Therefore, both prepared and unprepared societies are face with same realities. Of course, the victims are the unprepared Third World nation, particularly Africa, who seems to be left behind in all things except mediocrity.

Unfortunately, instead of us to empathize with today’s troubled and abandoned young people, we bash them, accuse them and denigrate them in the name of discipline. We do not know that whatever we don’t like and complain of in our precious young ones today, we are the ones who put them there. We fail very woefully to accept this reality that our precious children and young people are either victims and beneficiaries of our dominant examples. We forget that a society will forever deserve the kind of children they raise.

Alas, there is an evil I have seen under the sun. An African continent seeks to reap where we have not sown. We seek to place demands on our precious children where we have not invested in their POSITIVE VALUE SYSTEM in words and indeed. Laughably, a society with a CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE, celebrated or silent seeks from her precious children a disciplined lifestyle. Yet the society does not really know what it seeks. Cannot define what discipline means as of old and as of now and how same is inculcated. This this is part of a piece for another conversation. I just found this point relevant to this discussion this day.

Empathy is what our precious young people demand to navigate the labrythine journey to adulthood

Our mission is clear, we cannot continue to complain about what we permit, in the words of Mike Murdock; we cannot also continue to define the problem we must decide it… That is the mission of our NGO, #SAFE4MEMovement and all of its channels of expressions, including #SAFEEncounter and our monthly comic, #SAFEVille.

Tomorrow, I will continue this piece, sharing what we mean by counter-culture, POSITIVE VALUE SYSTEM and the details of what we shared at IVY Premier College and QC where we reached out to over 600 Precious young people.

Do have an INSPIRED weekend.

Yours in THE BEST INTEREST OF THE PRECIOUS AFRICAN CHILD,

Taiwo AKINLAMI

The Preacher