Skills Day: Foundation trains over 300 youths in 4 years
To mark the World Youth Skills Day, today, Mainstream Foundation has issued a scorecard indicating it trained and equipped over 300 young people in the past for years on entrepreneurship. Citing demographic statistics, the Foundation said a significant percentage of Nigeria’s population is made up of young people who are mostly unskilled. The World Youth […]
To mark the World Youth Skills Day, today, Mainstream Foundation has issued a scorecard indicating it trained and equipped over 300 young people in the past for years on entrepreneurship.
Citing demographic statistics, the Foundation said a significant percentage of Nigeria’s population is made up of young people who are mostly unskilled.
The World Youth Skills Day, marked every July 15, is a day dedicated to providing young people requisite skills and training for the future.
This year’s theme is: ’Transforming youth skills for the future’. Mainstream Foundation, is the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of Mainstream Energy Solutions Limited (MESL), the operators of the Kainji and Jebba hydropower plants in Niger state.
Emphasizing its dedication to youth empowerment, the foundation stated thus: “Mainstream Foundation has trained and equipped more than 300 young people in the past four years with entrepreneurial skills and provided them capital to start businesses of their own. The foundation did this in partnership with various federal and state-based institutions while ensuring gender balance in the provision of these skills.”
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the unemployment rate is at 33 per cent which means that 33 out of every 100 Nigerians who are able to work have none. At 213.117 million current population figures, about 70m Nigerians are unemployed.
The most recent youth empowerment scheme of the foundation was the training and equipping of 70 youths from its operational area. At the ceremony witnessed by former head of State, gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar and the MESL board chairman, Col. Sani Bello (Rtd) in Borgu town, a graduate, Aisha Yahaya said she learnt catering services.
“We are grateful to the Foundation for this gesture and I am ready to start my business with the starter pack; I have already gotten a place for it.”
Husaini Yusuf from Yauri in Kebbi state was trained on poultry at the Federal College of Education, Kontagora. “Poultry is lucrative if you have the knowledge because, for instance, eggs are what people consume every day. I am grateful for the seed money; it will help me along the way.”
The Executive Director of the Foundation, Siraj Abdullahi, said the foundation focuses on training and equipping youths on catering, decoration, poultry and fish farming among others, while it also monitors these businesses to ensure they grow.
It has also trained scores of young engineering graduates from host communities in Niger, Kebbi among others in the NAPTIN Graduate Skills Development Programme (NGSDP), with the best hands granted employment in the two power plants.