In the last 10 years, the Ovie Brume Foundation (OBF) has placed over 300 students as interns in the financial, oil and gas, telecoms and pharmaceutical sectors, among others. The beneficiaries are equipped with requisite skills that could earn them jobs or turn them to entrepreneurs. The foundation is also partnering with Lafarge Nigeria in its maiden literacy competition developed to hone the students’skills to achieve their career goals, writes COLLINS NWEZE.
Youths are the leaders of tomorrow. The Ovie Brume Foun-dation (OBF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) with bias for youth education and empowerment, believes in this attruism. This explains why the OBF is implementing a long-term goal for the youth. The foundation, now in its 10th year, is creating a future for the youth to either build successful careers, or become job creators.
Executive Director, Ovie Brume Foundation, Mrs. Iwalola Akin-Jimoh, said the firm has helped over 300 school leavers achieve successful careers in banking, pharmaceutical, energy, security, clothing, and other key sectors of the economy.
Her words: “We take children, place them in different companies, in line with their career aspirations. They learn on the job, after which they go back to school. This helps to motivate them. We also guide them along their career paths and after school, we always place them as interns in these organisations, especially those at the Senior Secondary School level.”
She explained that many of these students have been deployed as interns to the Bank of Industry (BoI), Flying Doctors, Emzor Pharmaceuticals, printing companies, fashion companies and Marina Securities, among other real sector operators.
Mrs. Akin-Jimoh expained that they spend at least a month, while some stay longer especially if they find their skills very useful. She said the body has been doing this for more than 10 years.
“We place up to 30 kids in a year, that’s about 300 kids in 10 years. Sometimes, we match students’ skills with industry. But most of the students that are placed are those that have passed through the Ovie Brume Foundation. Those we can vouch for in terms of their skills and ability, and the fact that when they get to these institutions, they will deliver,” she said.
Capacity building
The OBF Director said when organisations invest in capacity building for their workforce, it enables them achieve their objectives. She said a lot of organisations have high expectations about the people coming into their companies, but most times they are disappointed by what they find.
“So, we also talk about the quality of education that the people are getting. Most tertiary institutions teach students practicals, but they fail to relate what they teach to the Nigerian situation. So, if you get someone, for instance with first class in mathematics, to go and work in an oil servicing company, you still need to train such person on how to deploy his mathematical skills on the oil industry,” she said.
She said a lot of graduates that are being churned out are not suitable for the jobs that are currently available, adding that it is important that our educational systems are structured in a way that people that are coming out are able to fill spaces that are available.
On entrepreneurship, Mrs. Akin-Jimoh said the available jobs are not enough to cater for the graduates churned out yearly. “So, it is even better, where people are not coming out and be looking for white collar jobs. They come out with skills that enable them start their own businesses. So, instead of looking for a job, one can be a job creator. We need people to think more along the line of creating jobs, rather than seeking jobs,” she said.
Partnership with Lafarge
The OBF American Corner Coordinator, Lois Ekeleme, explained the group’s partnership with Lafarge Nigeria on its maiden Literacy Competition and what it intends to achieve.
She said the project is part of OBF’s strategy to encourage literacy and literacy appreciation amongst primary school students in Nigeria. She said the group is also celebrating its results from the Books on Wheels Project that was carried out in different Lafarge sites around the country. Books on wheels is one of the many literacy programmes put together by the OBF to enhance writing skills, promote reading culture and improve the vocabulary of public primary school pupils within the country.
The competitions will feature tests to assess reading and writing ability and spelling bees. Selected schools from various regions will provide two primary six pupils as their representatives at the regional level. The first two winners from each region will then proceed to represent the region at the finals in Lagos.
So far, 250 primary school children have benefitted from the Books on Wheels Project. She said the group is promoting literacy programmes because it sees it as one of the ways it can address the current learning and skills gap in the country.
“What that entails is taking books to the schools, reading with the students, tracking how they improve with time, in their reading and writing abilities. We tracked the project into a period of about one year, and found that it was successful. It was in the process of this, that we now have a budding relationship with Lafarge which have bought into some of our literacy projects in the past,” she said.
Speaking further, she said the firm had suggested putting in some hours to volunteer from their different locations. “In Nigeria, the Books on Wheels is one the initiatives they bought into for their education Corporate Social Responsibility projects. They are implementing Books on Wheels in their locations in Nigeria, which include Rivers State, Ashaka in Gombe State, Ewekoro and Shagamu in Ogun State and in Lagos.
“We work with the primary schools that they identified in primary five and six, and over a period of one year, we have read short story books of about 20 titles across five locations, and we try to read about two books every month to about 50 children. Across board, we have enabled 250 primary schools children, read about 20 titles. The books are written by local authors,” she explained.
Mrs. Ekeleme said the group has about 39 volunteers, not only in Lafarge, but also in other organisations. “And if you look at the total number of children that have access to our books, it is well over 800. When we started, we never knew we were going to get a lot of support from corporate organisations. We have held three regional competitions in Nigeria, and because we are implementing it in three geo-political zones: Southwest, Southsouth and Northeast, we conducted literacy competitions in those three units,” she said.
“In each of them, six states were invited to participate. Only two states declined.We have 16 states participating across board. In the Southsouth, Delta and Akwa Ibom states came first. Southwest- Ekiti and Ogun states while for Northeast, Bauchi and Taraba states. The six states will in December, be in Lagos for the grand finale.
They will be represented each by a young girl and boy of Primary six status who had competed in the regional competition,” she added.
Speaking on the educational programmes, Mrs. Akin-Jimoh said a lot of state governments are committed to building physical infrastructure in schools but fail to realise that students need to also learn phonetics, dictions among other modern learning systems.
Regretably, not many of them are paying attention to type and quality of education the students are getting and what the teachers are teaching. “Some teachers are still doing ‘A for Apple’, ‘B for Ball’, when a lot of primary schools are already teaching phonetics and diction, so that the students can pronounce very well. That is a major problem for all. Those who are doing it, you will see their students excelling in these literacy competitions. What we want is for the people concerned to pay more attention,” she said.
Lack of proper teaching, she said has led to skills gap in the country. “We are already in a crisis situation, when it comes to people that are being employed, and not having the right skills. Employers are complaining about poor manpower. The foundation is very important because if you do not get the primary and secondary right, you are not going to get the tertiary right too,” she said.
Prizes for winners
Speaking on the prizes, Ekeleme said the contestants for the final competition will have to do reading and comprehension writing, spelling, and the marks will be added together and you now have the final scores.
“But they had written essays, which were collected at the regional competitions. Now, those essays and other assessments will be added to the summary writing scores, spelling at the finals. It is from there we will get the first, second and third winners.
We want to improve literacy skills. They will get e-readers; the issue of digital technology will no longer be strange to them. They are also getting digital computers for their schools while the teachers will get tablets. The consolation prizes include CDs that will help in teaching phonetics in the schools,” she said.
Funding
On funding, the OBF Director said: “It is funded by Lafarge, but the foundation has also brought in funds. The project will cost about N15 million for the competition alone. If we want to combine it with the intervention in schools, it will be like between N25 and N30 million.
“Our mid-line assessment showed that some of the students were at zero level when it comes to reading and writing, before the intervention. But after four months of intervention, it has improved. We have nine per cent improvement in Lagos, 19 per cent in Shagamu, 23 per cent in Onne, 49 in Ewekoro and 62 per cent improvement in Ashaka after reading 20 titles. We forecast that if we do this for 12 months, the figure we will get, you times it by four quarters. I think that’s a major feat,” she said.
She said the uniqueness of this intervention is that all you need to do is read. “So, once you can read to a child, you ensure that if there is any difficult word, the child is able to pick a dictionary, write down the meaning. That’s all that is needed. So, everyone can implement this intervention, once the person can read and speak English. In places where the literacy level went up, a lot of teachers actually bought into the project. If teachers are able to go, just an extra mile and read to the kids, and make sure that they follow the tracks, there will be great success,” she said.
Job statistics
The latest Job Creation and Employment Survey from the National Bureau of Statistics show formal sector employment at 3.24 million in September, this year.
The survey defines formal sector as consisting of establishments with 10 or more employees, and is based on a sample of 5,000 firms across the 36 states of Nigeria. The total was slightly higher than the 3.15 million recorded in the previous quarter. While the exercise does not report employment totals in the informal sector or public institutions, and even allowing for a median age of 17.2 years in 2013 according to the UN Population Division, we can quickly see why the Federal Government of Nigeria is focused on job creation for Nigeria’s population of more than 170 million.
