No fewer than 600 youths, comprising persons with disabilities on Saturday commenced a six months training on computer literacy, and solar installations to boost their self-reliance.
Our correspondent reports that the training was organised by Innovation Development and Effectiveness in the Acquisition of Skills, a collaboration between Federal Ministry of Education and World Bank.
The training is estimated at about N125 million.
Speaking, Dije Usman-Tela, Innovation Grant Manager of IDEAS, noted that the training would empower the beneficiaries to become self-reliant.
She said, “We are here for orientation of participants and facilitators for smooth take off the training. The training is for six months; three months for training, the other three months there will be internship, mentorship and pitching.”
While explaining the processes that led to the grant, she disclosed that the group contributed 20 per cent of total sum of N125 million after various steps, “The organisation got the grant on competitive basis, there was publication, a call for proposal of which they applied. So they came as a consortium with the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities and Hope Foundation for the Disable, they passed through the examination, they were interviewed and invited to other interviews. We were here with World Bank to assess their facilities and they promised to contribute 20 per cent counterpart funding,” Usman-Tela added.
Continuing the Grant Manager added, “IDEAS is set to give participants total training on skills acquisition and after acquiring it you will be certified. The certificate will be globally recognised from software organisations depending on the certification body; like Cisco, Microsoft etc they have selected to certify the beneficiaries. With the training they can go into labour market and compete globally.”
On the 80 per cent contribution of Federal Government alongside World Bank, “the value is N100 million and for the 20 per cent is N25million. The total sum of the project is N125 million. It will not come in bulk it will be paid in tranches, because tranche is a milestone. If you are given a percentage after executing it you will still come back for more, we will monitor, evaluate what you have spent but if you didn’t perform another tranche will not be given to you. The money is divided into tranches for the training each has a milestone attached to it,” she added.
Also speaking, Dr Ishaku Adamu, Project Lead Hope Foundation for the Disabled and Joint National Association for Persons with Disabilities consortium for the IDEAS grant project in Gombe State said “We applied for the project as advertised by the Federal Ministry of Education under the IDEAs office. We scaled all the stages of selection process and they certified that we are capable to deliver this particular training to the youths, women and persons with disabilities in Gombe State.”
On how the participants were picked he added, “We selected people based on their interest. We will teach them different skills in computer and solar installation. In total our organisation is responsible to train 600 in two batches, for a start we are going to train 300, after three months we graduate them for internship and enrol them another 300 making 600 but because of the high interest of persons we are going to take it to 700.”
He added, “Participants must have secondary or tertiary education, identity card, must understand English, they must commit to attend the training; internship, mentorship, and pitching.”
