As the country’s unemployment situation worsens, the Blessed Gumpat Foundation (BGF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has organised skill acquisition training for youths of Olambe community, Ogun State.
Over 80 people received training in different skills which included catering services, hat and bead making, event management, cosmetology (liquid soaps, air freshener etc), dish making, barbing, cocktail drinks, make-ups and gale, art and sign, black soap, tie and dye, basket weaving, ankara craft, cake making and snacks making, among others.
The Coordinator of the programme, Pastor Timpaul Prisca said the foundation was committed to poverty eradication and alleviation. She also said there was need for entrepreneurship development and skill acquisition for the youth. This, she said, would impact positively on the immediate environment and the society as a whole.
Apart from providing teaching aids, handout/training manuals, graduation gowns and certificates to successful participants, Prisca said the foundation would consider assistance for trainee(s) in dire need of finance to set up his or her workshop
The foundation, which is also non-profit-based, was established for the purposes of empowerment and skill acquisition for the youth and the aged alike. According to the coordinator, the centre has goodwill for the homeless and children of school age who she said are rather hawking on the street instead of being in the classroom.
She told Southwest Report that the foundation has the intention of building skill acquisition centres in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in the nearest future.
“Our target audience cuts across everyone who wants to be boss of his own and who wants to have streams of income in all rural/urban communities of the country,” she said.
According to her, the foundation is in partnership with international bodies and local organisations in order to create wealth and ensure financial freedom among its target groups through training, lecture, donation and grants.
If government and other public-spirited individuals or group of individuals would support the initiative, the rate of unemployment would be reduced if not eradicated.
On some of the drawbacks the foundation experiences, the coordinator said funding was a major challenge confronting it.
She said: “Financial support is hardly coming from anybody, including the government. It’s all about passion to ensure that the vision is not stifled that informed our doing it by ourselves.”
She also said responses from benefiting communities were not very encouraging, adding that people were expected to come out en masse to key into the training. They didn’t believe what we have come to do; perhaps such things hardly ever come to them.
Apart from the training, the NGO also donated some hospital equipment to facilitate the rehabilitation of the dilapidated primary health centre in the community.
Commending the organisation’s efforts towards improving the living standard of members of the community, Chairman, Olambe Area Community Development Council (OACDC), Captain Babatope Emmanuel (rtd) said the empowerment programme would be significant to widows, women and youths that are idle. According to him, the training would go a long way in reducing youths’ disturbances in the area.
He also said the hospital equipment donated by the foundation would spur community efforts to rehabilitate the primary health centre, saying the health centre had been abandoned for a very long time due to lack of government’s assistance.
”We are grateful to the Blessed Gumpat Foundation for the empowerment programme it brought to this community. We are also grateful for the hospital equipment it donated to the community’s health centre.
“It is a challenge to us; it has encouraged us to move because we cannot just keep those things there; we don’t want to jeopardize their efforts. We will pool our resources through levy and voluntary donations; we need to put something on ground,” he said.
He, however, appealed to the state government to provide infrastructural facilities such as roads, water, schools and electricity for the development of the area.
