As part of the effort to train our youths on self-reliance, a Nongovernmental Organisation(NGO) Hope Builders, is set to train entrepreneurs on skills acquisition.
They called on graduates from universities and other higher institutions to go for skills acquisition and become employers of labour rather than seeking for job.
The Executive Director and Founder of Hope Builders, Rev. Mathias Bodam Yashim made this known in a press conference in Kaduna as part of activities lined up for the forthcoming builders festival.
Rev Yashim, who said his organisation is into training professionals on skills, added that society needs more professionals than professors in the world of entrepreneurship.
He said the festival, which is expected to be held in late November, has the theme “Transformative Innovations for Sustainable Social Change.”
The Executive Director said his organisation is running a training centre called Enterprise Academy, different from the education academy, for skills acquisition by professionals in Nigeria and other countries like Ghana and India.
“In our Enterprise Academy, we are putting professionals together to look at the future of enterprises based on skills acquisition. Of course, the exhibition is open to everybody. We want to encourage everybody to put aside academic qualifications and concentrate on the skills they can demonstrate.
“We are targeting more than 100 hundred entrepreneurs; at least at the end of the exhibition, we want to have 100 entrepreneurs empowered.
“We have students from Nigeria and other countries like Ghana and India. We train professionals on skills, we are not the talking professionals as in higher institutions like universities or colleges of education.
“We work on your skills. We have so far trained 29,000 entrepreneurs. Here, we ask professionals to put aside their certificates and talk about what they have read at the university.
“For example, if you are a journalist, you have to talk about journalism; if you are a marketer, you have to talk about marketing, who your target is, how you want to sell, and so on and so forth.
“We need more professionals than professors now. We need skills to create wealth and employment, not to acquire certificates to look for jobs. We are working gradually towards getting more participants from the local areas.
“There are 36.9 million MSMEs representing 96.7% of all businesses in Nigeria. 67% of these MSMEs are youth owned. However, the business environment is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. 73% of them face liquidity challenges because most of them depend on grants and projects from donor agencies.
“We are building a space for intergenerational dialogue to support young, resourceful, willing, and upcoming social entrepreneurs to generate sustainable revenue sources.
“We are strengthening the capabilities of at least 100 entrepreneurs to enable them apply systems-changing innovations towards ventures’ resilience and long-term sustainability”. Rev. Yashim said.
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