Youth development is as a core aspect of human and national progress in Nigeria. The study suggests the development of young people as the means of poverty reduction. It indicates that amidst cultural, ethnic, and religious diversities, and in the light of threats to human life and property, the development of the youth is the way to promoting peace and unity, justice, and security. The book argues on a two-fold contribution: While the Nigerian Church is to intensify efforts in the active participation of lay Christians in politics, the State is to tackle critical areas to ensure a decent standard of living for all.

It is increasingly clear that children and the youth today play a significant role in the labour process in Africa. But, to what extent is this role benign? And when and why does this role become exploitative rather than beneficial? This book on children and the youth in Africa sets out to address these questions. The book observes that in Africa today, children are under pressure to work, often engaged in the worst forms of child labour and therefore not living out their role as children. It argues that the social and economic environment of the African child is markedly different from what occurs elsewhere, and goes further to challenge all factors that have combined in stripping children of their childhood and turning them into instruments and commodities in the labour process. It also explains the sources, dynamics, magnitude and likely consequences of the exploitation of children and the youth in contemporary Africa. The book is an invaluable contribution to the discourse on children, while the case studies are aimed at creating more awareness about the development problems of children and the youth in Africa, with a view to evolving more effective national and global responses.

This book focuses on African childhood and youth within the context of development and socialization where children are expected to be moulded in the image of adults. In many African societies children are generally held as passive bearers of the demands of adults, regardless of the fact that they are often exposed to a multitude of challenges that originate from the capriciousness of those adults. However, buoyed by international conventions and national legislations that offer them greater protection, and the ubiquitous internet that exposes them to childhood and youth experiences elsewhere, many of them are increasingly becoming assertive in homes, schools, and communities as well as re-invigorating their survival and self-preservation instincts. It is in this regard that this book, through the various chapters, engages with their competencies, skills and creativity to respond to experiential challenges as independent migrants or ones under coercion working in city streets and markets or cocoa farms or juggling work and schooling in pursuit of some education. Confronted with their parents and siblings health predicaments and the inadequacies of state and familial care, or urgent negotiation of their sexualities, they demonstrate incredible resilience. Similarly, their perceptiveness is demonstrated in a unique appreciation of politics and its actors and a capacity to assume responsibilities beyond their chronological age. Thus while highlighting some of the challenges confronting African children, the book provides gripping evidence of how they resiliently negotiate those challenges.

Children constitute a large part of the population of developing countries. This text considers issues such as education, child labour, street children, child soldiers, refugees, child slaves, and the impact of environmental change and hazards on children.

This volume examines the field of learning disabilities and the education of learning disabled (LD) children through the eyes of several experts. Contributors bring to the book such diverse academic backgrounds as education, psychology, special education and medicine. The chapters, adapted from lectures given at the Landmark West School in California, include audience questions and responses. Chapters on new medications for the LD child, contemporary research on dyslexia and educational strategies for improving reading are complemented bychapters on social and emotional issues that affect the families of learning disabled children, adolescents and young adults.