Foundation trains 200 youths in skills acquisition using Coca-Cola grant
The Baywood Foundation, an NGO, has started training 200 youths in Enugu East Local Government Area using a grant provided by the Coca-Cola Foundation.
Beneficiaries will be trained to acquire entrepreneurial and vocational skills in ICT, photography, photo and video editing, barbing, digital marketing, graphics design and the making of confectionaries.
Other skills being taught are cosmetology, production of household essentials and other homemade consumables, fascinators, hats and other small scale enterprises that young people can leverage on for steady income.
Flagging off the training on Saturday at Nkwo-Nike, Secretariat of the council area, the Country Director of the Foundation, Mr Chukwudi Ojielo, said that the Youth ICT and Skill Acquisition Project (YISAP) was meant to eliminate poverty.
Ojielo noted that the fight against poverty in Nigeria was every one’s responsibility and pledged the Foundation’s commitment to impact the Nigerian populace with skills that would provide employment and income.
He recounted the successes achieved in two council areas – Igboeze-North and Udi – where the YISAP programme had been implemented.
“I am challenging the selected youths in this council area to prove themselves worthy representatives and also put to practice everything they will learn in the next three-months.
“It is only the best 33 participants that would be given seed funds as a start-up support,’’ he said.
The YISAP Programme Officer, Mr Obinna Ogbu, said two days of each week of the training would focus on business development topics and skills.
“Such business development topics and skills include: personal and product branding; the importance of social media for business; managing finances and bookkeeping and how to attract customers to businesses,’’ Ogbu said.
In his remarks, Chairman, Enugu East Local Government Council, Chief Alex Ugwu, urged participants to use the opportunity offered by the programme to make a change for good in their lives.
Baywood Foundation received a grant from the Coca-Cola Foundation in January to empower 600 youths in Enugu State through YISAP.
The programme is providing the seed grant of between N45,000 and N60,000 to 100 exceptionally-performed youths among the 600 participants assessed by their attendance, learning and innovative capacities.
Two hundred trainees would be drawn from each of the three senatorial districts of the state to make the 600 beneficiaries.
