Her Royal Majesty Olori, the wife of Olu of Warri, Ogiame Atuwatse III, has said training of students on entrepreneurial skills will equip them for future challenges in addition to boosting the national economy through the small, medium and large scale businesses and investments.
Speaking at the second day of the entrepreneurial training program for students of selected schools in Warri South Council area, yesterday, Olori Atuwatse III, noted that the first phase of the process which is ‘Train-The Trainers’, had commenced with the training of teachers of these schools who in turn trains students in their various schools.
According to her, the Set4LYf project of Junior Achievement Nigeria which is done in partnership with Royal Iwere Foundation is set to train thousands of young people for six months to enable them have entrepreneurial skills to impact positively on themselves and their various communities.
She said:” The programme is poised to equip these young people who are the next set of leaders for leadership positions to improve, build and develop their communities. With this training, they are prepared and set for global stage”.
According to her, in the next couple of years, with the training that is being given to these young people, they would be able to compete with their counterparts in any part of the world in business, leadership and entrepreneurial Skills.
She said, the teachers being trained by Junior Achievement Nigeria for the day are those who volunteered to implement the training in different schools as it impossible to reach all the students in different schools across the three local government areas of Warri: Warri South, North and Warri Southwest, considering the number of students in different schools.
She said; “This Junior Achievement Nigeria’s team train the teachers who have volunteered to partner with us to be our implementation arm. As you are aware, dealing with over a thousand kids effectively, it means, we have to plug into already existing educational system and the teachers are the hearts for that. So, equipping the teachers is equipping the children is the best the foundation can do”.
According to her, apart from the teachers, the foundation also has adhoc volunteers staff to partner them for the next six months who will be in classroom, playground, among others to ensure the robust curriculum is achieved.
Royal Majesty Olori Ogiame Atuwatse III who was represented in the ceremony by Chief Operations Officer,.Royal Iwere Foundation – Humanitarian arm of Warri Kingdom Monarchy, Ogechukwu Abiago Ezeobiorah charged the teachers for the training to take it seriously to enable them impact on the students just as she charged the students not to take the programme for granted but be serious while the programme lasted.
On his part, the Executive Director, Junior Achievement Nigeria, Ugonna Achebe said the Set4LYf is a programme to train young people have entrepreneurial skills
and develop entrepreneurial mindset where they are able to identify problems, find opportunity and create solutions that can build an economic sphere.
According to him, they make their training more practical as much as possible. He said, the teachers’ training for the day is focused on Ideathon and the teachers have responded accordingly.
He said:” Today, the trainees were exited, the response has been very encouraging. The teachers were active contributing, engaging. We make the programme as practical as possible. We were able to identify a problem in a community and identified the solution to the problem”.
The Executive Director of Junior Achievement Nigeria who was represented by the Assistant Programme Manager, Oluwaseyi Hassan expressed hope that the teachers would be able to put into practice by impacting the acquired skills on the students when they go back to their various schools.
He charged the students that would be trained in the various schools to take their studies seriously to enable them get the right knowledge and skills that would be bequeath on them for their future endeavours.
The Set4LYf training programme which started yesterday, Monday continues tomorrow.
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