A non-profit organization in the Niger Delta that supports peace and equitable economic growth has trained 1000 young people in the region. The project equips young school leavers with skills training and reskilling, as well as soft skills for altering attitudes and behavior. A total of 2,033 successful participants were linked to immediate waged work or given support to start their own creative businesses.
Delta of the Niger – Starting in May 2022, the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) has given over N104 million in funding to 12 implementing partners to teach 1,000 youth in the Niger Delta region on a variety of technical and soft vocational skills for at least six months.
On Thursday, March 24, Tunji Idowu, the executive director of PIND, announced this at a grant signing ceremony for the scale-up of PIND’s Niger Delta Youth Employment Pathways (NDYEP) programme.
NDYEP was founded in 2018 with the goal of developing youth training models in which marginalized young people are trained in market-relevant skills and then assisted in finding and maintaining long-term jobs or businesses.
The Ford Foundation funded the pilot project. In four booming areas, 4,355 youngsters were trained and equipped with in-demand vocational skills between 2018 and 2021. (ICT, building construction, agriculture, and finished leather).
The PIND Executive Director praised the implementing partners whose efforts, he observed, led to the project’s success at the signing event, which also served to onboard the 12 implementing partners involved in the project’s scale-up in Abia, Akwa Ibom, and Rivers states.
In the Niger Delta, 50 young entrepreneurs were taught in a renewable energy initiative. Remember that 50 aspiring entrepreneurs from three Niger Delta states recently received training in a business connections program aimed at improving service delivery, profitability, and management abilities.
The training, which took place in the states of Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers, was a mentorship and capacity development program aimed at bringing 50 renewable energy sector retailers on board. The measure is part of an effort to narrow the Niger Delta’s unemployment gap.
The project, which is sponsored by the UN Basket Fund, is one of Nigeria’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and will take place in various areas until the end of March 2022. (Abuja, Lagos, and Enugu). Patience Ekeoba, the national programme officer for UN Women Nigeria, spoke at the opening ceremony of the four-week capacity-building workshop on Monday, February 28 in Abuja, noting that the COVID-19 conflict had impacted investment, growth, and employment in Nigeria.
