AKINWALE ABOLUWADE
Two non-profit organizations, Campuslabs and The 234Project are currently embarking on training of fresh graduates and undergraduates from the nation’s universities and polytechnics on needed skills to excel during job interviews and to cope as a staff in the corporate world.
The six weeks training for the Ibadan Cohorts, under the Employability Incubator scheme, is currently ongoing in the Human Nutrition Department of the University of Ibadan with a total of 60 participants drawn majorly from some of the higher institutions in Oyo State.
Oyo Reporters Online has it that the Employability Incubator, a workforce development programme launched in 2017, is designed to equip young people with the competencies required for workplace.
Monisola Adebayo, Human Resources practitioner with British American Tobacco, who was a resource person at the training, described the initiative by Campuslabs and The 234Project as a rare and laudable opportunity for the youth.
Dwelling on her experience, she said, “After leaving the university, I didn’t have the kind of opportunity that the young people are now having. Here, you have the opportunity to develop the critical skills that you would need at workplace. Most of the times, we don’t have experiential learning while we were in school.
“Part of why I am doing this is to be able to give back part of what I had learnt in the course of my journey so that as they (the participants) are starting off, it would put them in a better position. The main objective is to give them a titbit into world of work. The purpose is to make them see the value that they possess. We cannot say that we have the corporate jobs that every eligible youth can go into in Nigeria. No matter how developed a country is, there won’t be enough job for the number of eligible youth.
“This is why we have the space of those who are self employed. I see a lot of young people scaling the odds. Your goal is to meet a need. You may meet the need in the corporate world or outside of it. Whatever the case, you have to make sure that you are meeting a need to have money in return. The Nigerian youth must give their absolute best in whatever they do.
“I have learnt that what is most important in life is the need to give your absolute best in everything you are doing. The youth need to always give their best. There is no place for anything exceptional to happen through mediocrity. A lot of time, because of the environment, you may not feel the need to be exceptional because it does seem like exceptional is not celebrated, but you still need to give your best.”
Emeka Ossai, founder of Campuslabs and Head of Learning for the Employability Incubator, described the initiative as an academy that is positioned to prepare young people for the world of work by giving them soft skills required by the employers.
Ossai said, “We find out that they leave the universities and polytechnics without the skills set that the employers require. What we are doing is to fill that gap between the university and the work place. The Employerability Incubator programme has, however, lasted for 15years.
“It is a six weeks programme that is broken into classroom sessions on topics like Emotional Intelligence, Writing your Resume, Preparing for an Interview, Self Awareness, Project Management, Design Thinking etc. Participants would be made to work on real life business skills which would enhance their problem solving, critical thinking, leadership and teamwork skills.
“They are also billed to work on community impact projects where they chose a social problem that borders them in order for them to be socially responsible corporate citizens. The topics they could work on as a team include juvenile delinquency and maternal mortality. They would do presentations and business skills challenge.
“They would also be connected to mentors who would take them on for six months. Many of them would have access to internship opportunities.”
For the Ibadan Cohorts, Ossai said that the training would last six weeks and would be followed by the training for the Uyo, Akwa Ibom Cohorts which would last four weeks.
Asked about the success rate so far, he said, “It has been exciting. We have people who have moved on to Nestle, Flutterwave, Education USA. We are very excited about what this is coming up with and some of them who are still in school are interning with great organizations. We are beginning to see the fruits. My advice to them is to keep learning and never stop learning. We have facilitators from World Bank, Dell Computers etc. They should take advantage of this to advance their careers.”
The Country Manager for The 234 Project, Ifeoluwa Oyebisi, explaining its partnership with Campuslabs, said, “One of our focal areas is youth empowerment. We also believe in empowering the youth for employability. In Nigeria, there is a gap between the young people and the jobs they are looking for. We decide to build the bridge between the young job seekers and the employment they are seeking.”
Oluwatunmise Ayedogbon, a youth corp member who studied Micro Biology from the Kogi State University, serving with the Dominican University, Ibadan, described the training as very good. Omolola Babatola, a 300Level student of Economics from the University of Ibadan, said, “Gaining knowledge from the older generation is what I think my generation is losing. We have a lot to gain from the older generation.”
John Aremu, a graduate of Physics from University of Ibadan, said, “This is a wonderful programme. I was excited about the exposure to life skills which you don’t learn in school or at anywhere.”
