Introduction
Hope Builders Foundation for Entrepreneurial Education is in partnership with Jobberman Nigeria to train youths in Kaduna. The training is aimed at tackling unemployment in Nigeria by organizing soft skills training for youths between the ages of 18 and 35 years. The partnership titled, “Young Africa Works (YAW) aims to train 5 million young people and enable 3 million of them to secure dignified and fulfilling work by 2025.
The partnership started in July 2022 with a target population of 50,000 youths. However, at the end of the 12 weeks we were able to deliver more than the targeted population.
Training Locations
The first batch of the training focused on six Local Government Areas in Southern Kaduna. These include; Sanga, Kachia, Zango Kataf, Jaba, Kaura and Jema’a LGAs.
Training Numbers
We have at the end of 3 months trained 57,000 youths and certified 54,000 of them.
Category of Trainees
58% of the total numbers trained are women and 42% are men. The number constitute youths between the ages of 18 and 35 years. It also includes students, market women, farmers and youths from all walks of life. 95% of the trainees had some form of formal education.
Support Team
The training was facilitated by Jobberman whereas Hope Builders provided mobilization and logistic support. The mobilization was done by our team of Logistic officers and Mobilizers who supported the Jobberman team to execute the training successfully.
Duration
The training lasted for 3 months with an average of 4,500 trainees per week. Each training session lasted for 3 hours.
Contents
The soft skills is aimed at equipping participants on the following
- Personal Effectiveness and Time Management
- Effective Communication
- Emotional Intelligence
- Employability Skills
- Creativity, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Challenges
- Constant Rainfall: July, August, and September were the pick of the rains at Southern Kaduna. This resulted in low-turn up and subsequent cancellation of trainings
- Facilitators: One of the major challenges was the constant late arrival of facilitators to the venue. This has greatly improved during the month of September.
It was indeed a privilege to partner in this project and to participate in facilitating soft skills to local youths.
