By Matthew Denis
In a bid to encourage self-reliance and reduce unemployment rate in
the country, Rhema Chapel International Churches in collaboration with
a Non-Governmental Organization – InnoGen Initiatives organised a
two-day workshop on financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills for
over 200 youths.
The workshop was held along Stadium Road, Ilorin, Kwara State capital
on Tuesday.
The programme themed; ‘The Making of an Entrepreneur among Youths’
featured seasoned Entrepreneurial experts and consultants as trainers.
The Director of Innogen Initiative, Mr. Obasanjo Onireti said the
essence of the programme is to train young people on financial
literacy and entrepreneurship, so that they can become self-reliant.
“This is the vision of the leader of the Church, Pastor Dele Edward in
line with the overall objective of the Minister in Charge of Satellite
church here, Pastor Jonathan Tobin.
“The idea of the Kingdom Finance Series is to help young Nigerians
understand the making of an entrepreneur. We focus on how do you
start, manage , and grow a successful business? Participants are
exposed to the nitty gritty of entrepreneurship. ”
According to him, there were over 200 cross section of participants
that attended the two- day event.
He said, “We want to start from our immediate environment to change
people’s living standard through empowerment. We took a unique
approach to the training. Usually when people do entrepreneurship
training, sometimes they focus on vocational skills but we took it a
little beyond that. We looked at the process of how you can generate
ideas.
“How do you continue with an existing business and develop a new
business model out of it? What are the managerial competencies you
need to have as an entrepreneur? You can have the vocational skills
but not be in business. So how do you turn those skills into a
business? That was our approach.
” At the end of the day if you have a skill and you participate in our
programme, you will be able to translate those skills into a business
and we’ll support you and help you fine tune it into a business. And
if you have a business running already we can help scale your business
to make you standout by seeking new business models or improving on
existing ones”
“One of the things we’re doing is to support people with ideas to
provide a little financial support. We’re starting small but we’re
going to grow overtime. we see job creation as a major instrument to
lift people out of poverty.”
He stressed that they are looking at supporting two out of the
participants through a business arrangement so they can be able to
monitor the project to generate profits and equally share the revenue
with them.
On unemployment rate in the country, he called on all the stakeholders
to create wealth through job opportunities, noting that governance is
too important to be left in the hands of politicians alone .
One of the trainers, the Chief Executive Officer of BEES, Mr. Omon
Ogudo tutored the participants on ways to discover their talents,
passion and zeal to achieve their targeted goals in life.
Also, Mr Charles Okeibunor who was identified as the workplace
transformer shared his ideas and experiences with the participants on
how business management, team work among others are key to success.
