One hundred and fifty people across three Area Councils in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have been empowered in various skills to help tackle the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The empowerment programme organised by Xploits Consulting Ltd and sponsored by Access Bank was part of effort to ensure people in rural communities have skills to fall back on to make extra income.
Speaking at the training of about 50 beneficiaries in Kuje Area Council, yesterday, the Director, Communication, Xploits Consulting, Mrs Grace Taiwo, said that her firm discovered that many people lost their jobs during the COVID-19 lockdown and that very few people had skills that they were benefiting from.
This, according to her, was what motivated her organization to reach out in training men and women that are interested in making extra income for themselves and families.
“The motivation is for us to see people use their hands to create wealth and depend less on the government.
“We covered three area council in FCT including Bwari, Kwali and Kuje where we trained them in multi-purpose soap making, beads making, make-up and gele.
“The training was not limited to women alone, men who indicated interest were also beneficiaries,” she said.
According to her, the training was extended to men because they are the bread winners in most homes and many of them were affected in their work places during the lockdown.
Mrs. Taiwo said they continued to follow-up the participants in monitoring and evaluation to make sure that they continue with what they have learnt and also train others within their communities.
One of the facilitators on make-up, Esther Ibrahim, said, this training was necessary because the “Nigeria we are now, no one can survive on just one salary job, but a skill or additional side business to make extra income.”
One of the participants, Philip Bitrus who applauded the efforts of the organisers of the training, noted that most times it is only women that benefit from such empowerment.
“We are happy that men are included and we don’t want to give gap, we want to stay with women and men learning the same work, if our women are not available we can equally do the same thing that they are expected to do,” he said.
He advised the government to double its efforts in joining private organisations and NGOs in training people in different areas of skills acquisitions for income generation.
Each participant was given starter tools in different areas of skills.
