PRINCESS Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SSAP-SDGs), has called on youths in the country to embrace skills acquisition programme and share such skills acquired with others.

Orelope-Adefulire made the call on Wednesday in Abuja at an event to disburse loans to some youths trained under the UNESCO Tap Projects, in collaboration with the SDGs Office and BFL Microfinance Bank.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that five persons, who had gone through the skill acquisition programme under the project, were presented with cheque of N500,000 each.

Orelope-Adefulire commended the coordinators of the empowerment programme for bringing youths together to build their capacities.

She, however, urged the beneficiaries as well as other youths, who had gone through the programme, to extend the skills acquired to others who are yet to benefit from similar programme,

She said this will ensure that the programme was sustained.

“The programme is to empower youths on skills that can guarantee their employment in the future.

“The idea is to train you so that you can also become a trainer, because it is not enough for you to be trained, if you are unable to extend that skill to others.

“What we need now is not to be selfish with knowledge acquired but to pass it on to others.

“When one person is trained, we expect that a minimum of 10 or 20 people will benefit from that individual’s skill,” she said.

Orelope-Adefulire commended the coordinators of the programme and pledged the commitment of the Office of the SSAP-SDGs to partner with other stakeholders in empowering youths.

In his remark, Mr Abdulsalami Ladigbolu, the Country Director, UNESCO Tap Project, said the event was to mark the one year anniversary of the project and to commemorate the International Youth Day.

He said the UNESCO Tap project was initiated to complement the efforts of the government to support the youth in the area of skill acquisition and empowerment.

“We intend to achieve this by addressing issues in three critical areas; the intellectual, leadership and economic capacity building of youths.

He said the beneficiaries of the loan were recommended by their trainers and had gone through the entire process in the programme for one year.

Miss Jamila Mohammed, who spoke on behalf of the beneficiaries, commended the organisers of the empowerment programme and pledged to put the skills learnt into practice, while assuring of judicious utilisation of the loan. (NAN)

– Aug. 15, 2018 @ 19:39 GMT |