Empowerment workshop renews hope for youths 

‘We Hold A Hand’, a community of mentors helping young professionals and entrepreneurs towards making better career decisions and decrease the probability of failed choices recently held a workshop tagged, ‘What’s Next After University’ in Lagos.

It was a gathering for undergraduates, graduates and employed guests to learn from speakers from various industries. The array of speakers included showbiz veteran, Dayo Adeneye, Bankole Williams, Oluyemisi Falaye, Lolo as well as seasoned Entrepreneur, Yinka Opeke.

Speaking on the need for the workshop, the convener, Mr Kevin Eguavoen said, “It was really out of my comfort zone but it’s something that I think we need because if we are going to encourage the young people to start businesses and stay in the country so not to feel the need to travel abroad. We need to give them support. Mentorship is expressing that mental strength which is what they need, that confidence is what a lot of young people need to actually sustain their businesses and also deploy when they have a job. In the western companies, they always ensure they have mentoring programme in -house so that when you join, they would give you somebody that will mentor you. That’s what we’re trying to do with this platform where young people have that one person they can confide in because sometimes when we’re in crowd and are shy, feel insecure, that would help a lot”.

The sessions of the five speakers was an in-depth dive into their personal stories, how their early days were, the challenges they faced, successes recorded and bits of pointers shared on how to be successful, break even and achieve goals.

Eguavoen added that, “Again there is something within our educational system we struggle with and we think we’re taught to feel like we need to only learn with reading and writing but that’s not true. For so many people that is just not their learning style. We try to raise awareness about that there are other ways which you can learn as well.”