Ministry of Youth and Sport Development in collaboration with ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), Global Peace Development (GPD) and Beacon Youth Initiative (BYI), as part of efforts towards supporting communities to strengthen community resilience and to tackle violent extremism in Nigeria but with a specific focus on Nasarawa State is implementing the “System and Structure Strengthening Approach against Radicalization to Violent Extremism (SARVE II) Project in Nasarawa State” with the aims of equipping communities with sustainable ability, capacity and structures to utilize available resources to prevent radicalization, respond to, withstand and overcome impact of adverse violent extremism should it occur. To achieve SARVE II project objective, ActionAid Nigeria, Global Peace Development and Beacon Youth Initiative and the Ministry of Youth and Sport conducted its annual youth summit in commemoration of the International Youth Day with the theme, Youth Engagement for Global Action with specific focus on preventing violent extremism and getting the Executive Governor of Nasarawa State Eng. Abdullahi Sule to approve and sign into law the Nasarawa State Youth Development Commission Bill The youth summit was held on 20th of August, 2020 featured participants across SARVE II project Intervention Communities, Ministry of Youth, Sports and Development, and Nasarawa state Youth Clusters.
The meeting presented an opportunity to celebrate and mainstream young peoples’ voices, actions and initiatives as well as their meaningful engagement in contributing to the development and educating youths on their roles in peace building and finally the youth summit provided a platform to learn from the panel discussion and resource person’s presentations. Youth were enlightened and cautioned on the danger of drug abuse, laziness, idleness, violence, and other social vices that may cause more harm than good and were encouraged to be smart and efficient instead of depending totally on government.
