The Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in Niger Delta has set out to train over 300 Ondo youths in entrepreneurial skills, in a bid to make them gainfully employed and employers of labour.
The PIND said the training was coming under the Youth Employment Pathways programme of the organization in collaboration with some implementing partners adding that the partners would offer the vocational training to the beneficiaries who are youths, on the bill of the PIND.
At the inauguration of the YEP in Akure, the state capital on Thursday, the Programme Director of PIND, Effiong Essien, disclosed that Ondo State would be the fifth state in the Niger Delta where the programmes would be taking place after Rivers, Abia, Akwa-Ibom and Delta States .
According to him, about 5,000 youths had so far benefited from the YEP programme since inception in 2017.
Essien explained that the youths would be trained by the implementing partners to acquire vocational skills in disciplines such as agriculture, Information Communication Technology, solar system, building construction, fashion designing, and catering.
He pointed out that the target of the programme were mostly women, youths and people living with disabilities who were between the age of 16 to 30 year while the training would be run for a year.
“Our target are majorly women, youths and people living with disabilities, to take them on a journey that ends up in enterprise and help them find a job or established their own business which means over time, they become employers of labour themselves.
“This is just a significant start and we are going to run this throughout the year and over the years increasing the number from hundreds to thousands”, Essien said.
He also commended the government for its support in giving the organization an enabling environment to carry out their project, expressing optimism that the training would benefit both the beneficiaries and the government as the former would employ people and generate revenue for the government.
Representing the office of the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Youth Empowerment in Ondo State, Mr. Owei Toikumo, said the government was pleased that the PIND had counted the state worthy to benefit from the programme.
He said: “This is a very good vision in the right direction because we all know that we have many unemployed youths in the society and government is not in position to engage all of them especially within the confines of the white-collar jobs, hence engaging of youths in vocational training becomes important.
“PIND foundation has deemed it fit to make Ondo State benefit from their programmes, it is very commendable, but we craved that they increase the number of the trainees to benefit more of these youths”.
Speaking on the YEP programme , representative of one of the implementing partners of PIND, the Greenshiled Integrated Technology, Nigeria Limited, Mrs. Olayinka Akinpelu said the project was of great benefits to the youths, saying at the end of the programme, the beneficiaries would be employed or start up their own business and become employers of labour in the state.
