Empowerment: Delta begins training of 1,000 STEP beneficiaries

By Festus Ahon, ASABA

IN pursuance of its commitment to training Delta youths into becoming Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Job and Wealth Creators, the State Government has engaged 1,000 unemployed youths in its 2020/2021 Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme, STEP and Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurs Programme, YAGEP.

Speaking during the Orientation and Personal Effectiveness Training, OPET held for enrollees into STEP in Asaba, the Chief Job and Wealth Creation Officer of the Delta State Job and Wealth Creation Bureau, Prof Eric Eboh, said the vision of the Bureau was to train, equip, empower and support youths in occupational skills and entrepreneurship development for self-employment and wealth creation.

Eboh noted that the overall goal was to leave a lasting legacy of a new generation of youth entrepreneurs who were well-motivated, highly inspired, properly skilled and adequately enabled for self-employment, adding that over 5,000 youths have been trained and established in their choice enterprises, either vocational skills or agricultural enterprises, in the past five and half years of the Okowa-led administration.

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He disclosed that 1,000 youths were being engaged in the 2020/2021 STEP/YAGEP Cycle, with STEP targeting 600 beneficiaries and YAGEP 400, adding that; “training is very important. Any opportunity you have to be trained, use it. Empowerment is about developing yourself and accepting responsibility.

“The 2020/2021 STEP enterprises include Welding and Fabrication with eight months training duration; Fashion Design and Tailoring (seven months); Tiling and Interlocking (six months); Electrical Installation and Solar Works (eight months); Catering and Confectionery (four months); Hairdressing and Braiding (four months)Audio-Visual services (four months); PoP, Painting and Screed-Making (for months).”

Listing quality, discipline and integrity as the hallmark of the high success rate recorded in the programme, he said that everyone desired to be part of the programme because of the quality of the job creation brand.

He said the essence of the workshop was to give the trainees the right mindset to impact in them the skills, the virtue and the attributes that would make them succeed in the training programme under the STEP initiative of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.

Eboh said: “The quality of the training and the support package is superb. It is an organized programme. The training manual is available both to the trainers and the trainees, that is the quality that the job creation programme represents. Discipline is another reason for its attractiveness. We do not condone indiscipline. If you do not have time for this programme, you will be shown the way out.

“Personal effectiveness is the most important elements for success in the training programme and what we impact in the trainees is that they cannot succeed as an entrepreneur if they are not personally effective.”

In his lecture titled: “The Role and Activities of Directorate of Youth Monitoring and Mentoring in Relation to STEP Trainees,” the Executive Assistant to the Governor on Youth Monitoring and Mentoring (DYMM), Mr Edward Mekwunye, said the mandate of DYMM was to sustain the success recorded in the programme over the years.

In their separate remarks, the Senior Special Assistants to the Governor on Job and Wealth Creation in the bureau, Mr Tony Omonemu, Mr Leonard Esegbue, Mr Emmanuel Osazuwa and Mr Frank Ebikefe told the beneficiaries to make the training count in their lives have been among the few 600 enrollees who made it into the programme out of the over 23,000 that applied for the programme.

Vanguard News Nigeria 

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