FD participant attenda Reception of Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs

Ogaga E. Maxwell FD participant and United Religious Initiative 2011 Youth Ambassador representing Africa in was part of the youth leaders invited by the The United States Ambassador to Nigeria Mr. Terence. P. McCulley to a Reception with The Honorable Ms. Maria Otero Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs On Thursday March 3, 2011 at the residence of The U.S Ambassador.
The event which was aimed at creating a forum for young leaders to interact with the Under Secretary and also for her to meet with young youth leaders in Nigeria, as Nigeria prepares for her elections in April.

The Ambassador in his opening remarks stated what honour we had to host the Under Secretary and also that she was on a visit to strengthen democratic activities in nations such as Nigeria.

She hinted the fact that it was time for young people to embrace positive change in terms of voting for the right candidate during the elections and also maintained that she was encouraged by the number of young people she saw doing positive things in the nation.

There was time for question and answer and it was a fulfilling time having such a wonderful interaction with both guests. The key issue raised during the interactive forum was the preparedness of Nigeria for the upcoming elections and also the active role youths have to play in making sure we make the needed change in the nation.
The issues of voter’s education, protection of our votes after elections and also citing the case of Egypt, Tunisia and other nations the role and power of Social Media in birthing change. The Under Secretary stressed that technology and social media has changed the face of politics and young people can take advantage of it for good, especially in the areas of election monitoring etc.

We also had some fun viewing the video “My Vote fit change Niaja” a video produced by Youngstars Foundation and Julius Agwu Foundation for Youths, which is aimed at educating voters on the need to vote for change. The Under Secretary was really pleased with youth activities in Nigeria

It was also time for social networking and also sharing with some few young people the values and principles of URI on a personal one on one level.

Good Governance workshop pictures Aba,Abia State, Nigeria Continued

Good Governance workshop pictures Aba,Abia State, Nigeria

D2DYI Team Leader Facilitates Democracy & Good Governance Workshop in Aba, Abia State, Nigeria

The Team leader of Dare 2 Dream Youth Initiative, Mr. Ogaga E. Maxwell an FD participant and a two – time FD grant recipient recently participated and served as the lead facilitator in a good governance and democracy training workshop in Aba, State, Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

The project Democracy Series: Participation-Learning and Active Youths (DESPLAY).DESPLAY is knowledge based and an activity oriented youth program that brings together youths from different African countries to deepen their democracy knowledge and foster active youth participation in good governance processes, since date their have been participant from Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, South Africa and Nigeria. Since its inception in 2005, DESPLAY has directly trained over 300 youths across Africa. Uniquely, DESPLAY has a peer education transfer component that allows participants to train over 25 youths in their communities who did not have the opportunity to be part of DESPLAY training. This project is called pass it on (Pio)


The Aba state pass-it-on (PIO) was a 1-day workshop on “Engaging youths in the democratic process and understanding the role of Nigerian youths in sustained democracy and good governance” organized by Promise Ozuzu.

Ogaga E. Maxwell the lead resource person took on the subject “When governance works”, the workshop was held at the NMA Hall of the Abia State University Teaching Hospital and in attendance were 40 Medical students, nurses and clinical students of the institution,


The aim was to encourage young people in the filed of medicine to participate in the areas of good governance and contribute their quote to democratization, good governance in Nigeria.

After the presentations, their was a break out session, where they were asked to suggest practical and pragmatic ways in which young people can be involved in governance and contribute positively, it was an interesting time as they brain stormed and came out with practical ways in which young people can contribute to good governance.

There was experience sharing and an interactive session for questions and answer.

Participants were also referred to several websites that could help them in their course for further growth in the areas of youth participation this includes: Youth Action for Change, Youngstars Foundation, World Movement for Democracy, United Religions Initiative and Voices against corruption.

The project had the support of AFRIGROWTH Foundation, Youths for Good Governance, All Nigerian United Nations, Student, and Youth Association (ANUNSA-ABSUTH) and the URI Youth Ambassador project of Ogaga E. Maxwell as URI Youth Ambassador for 2011 representing Africa, where he briefly talked about United Religions Initiative, upcoming projects, and the goal of URI as it affects good governance.

Earlier on in the year precisely in January, Ogaga E. Maxwell has also served as one of the co-facilitator of the main DESPLAY programme in Minna , Niger State that saw 35 participant present from every state of Nigeria and from Ghana, Cameroon and South Africa as international delegate. This was a step down of the main programme in Minna, by one of the attending participant Promise Ozuzu.

ARTS knows no culture, gender or religion

The project has been going on and the students are passionate about their ARTs work, we spent this week teaching students how to work with creative Arts materials and produce what is in their mind.
And we have opened them up to the dimension of creative arts and how to communicate their minds through arts.
The students are excited and many of them are beginning to value their arts gift, a student of one of the polytechnic who saw the project banner came into the hall and volunteered to also assist us in teaching the students about the art project and how to work with paper.
Pictures we have attached are those of one of the arts class we were teaching and they were asked to do a practical work of the map of Africa and also to write about peace.
We have a little set back on the cultural dance because we now observed that most schools have not been very particular about cultural dances, so we have also as part of the project started carrying out enlighten campaign on the role of culture in peace building.
The beauty of what we are doing now is that, in the schools we also have Muslims and Christian students working together in their various arts project groups, this is aimed at passing a message that we can work together regardless of our differences and that ART truly can bring us together, because paints knows no gender, race or colour that is what we are projecting.

P.E.A.C.E. Project progresses to the next stage

Project Update





The students after going through their rounds of practicals from our peer instructors on Creative Arts, been able to express their thoughts and feelings through simple Arts and also going through the basics of Essay writing, they would this Saturday compete amongst themselves in the area of Creative Arts and also essay writing to know which of them would be able to express the best of what PEACE means to them.
Through the project funding we are making all materials free to them and the students are eager to show case what they have learnt.
The objective of teaching them this is that they can make the best of their emotions through the arts and use them as a tool for peace building and solving inter religious fights. Instead of drawing what will offend people (The case of the cartoon of Mohammed that drew wide spread criticism and almost a global case of violence) we can use arts for peace and also instead of writing stories against people in their classes or schools and other religion that can stir up strife and violence as young people we can turn that tool already.

Through the skills I learnt from the YAC course on Creative writing, I was able to also inform them on basic keys and shared with them the experience we had with the blog and also the importance of headlines and we encourage as many as have access to the internet to start blogging and they were greatly excited about the project.
A lot of school principal that their student could not participate were so angry that they have asked us if we can make it an annual event, increase the number of participating schools and also make room for more participants.

FD Participant uses knowledge gained from FD Course to impact peers.

When I got in contact with the Youth Action for Change I knew it was going to be a lifetime experience that will positively impact my life. The introduction of courses during the FD project was of immense benefit, one of the courses we did then was on communications and writing especially on blogging.

Since the course I have been a blogger and an author of three books, August 14th specifically, I passed on the knowledge by organizing a creative writing workshop for young people and over 21 of them came from different locations around my region.
We had three guest lecturers the prominent been a USA best selling fiction author DR Sherri Lewis who was the main resource person and other includes Mr. Alexander Ighoro and Chima Ochemba.

The participants were happy about the course and requested for more of those forum to be created and were willing to sign up for an online course.

Ogaga E. Maxwell
Dare 2 Dream Youth Initiative
Warri, Delta State, Nigeria