By Alex Enebeli
Potters Wheel Foundation (PWF) says it will train 500 youths and women from each of the 17 local government areas (LGAs) of Enugu State on different entrepreneurial skills to check unemployment.
The President of the foundation, Mr Godson Onuzulike, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu on Wednesday.
Onuzulike said the training was designed to help solve the problem of unemployment, which had led many youths into crime and other social vices in the state.
He said the free training would be conducted in collaboration with the LGAs chairmen and traditional rulers.
He said the participants would be trained on how to make cakes, meat pie, doughnut, samosa, spring roll, chin-chin, peanut, Scotch egg, bread, cookies, alcohol-based hand sanitisers, antibacterial handwash, car wash and liquid soap.
He said the participants would also be trained in body wash soap, tile wash, toilet wash, insecticide, rodenticide, carrot oil, coconut oil, avocado oil and laundry tablet soap.
Other products included bleach, detergent, antiseptics, disinfectants, odour control, organic soap, organic cream and many others.
According to him, as a country, we do more of marketing other people’s goods, while the domestic products are less merketed, hence the country’s production economy has been low.
“We discovered that vacuum and decided to bridge the gap by training youths and women on how to do the production, packaging and marketing so that they can individually go into the market and become bosses of their own.
“So far, we have trained over 4,000 people free of charge since we started in 2020 through a partnership with the Enugu Ministry of Youths and Sports.
“They are now entrepreneurs themselves and we are targeting to train 8,500 more.
“We have also trained at least 150 police officers’ wives in Delta and another one is coming up in Nasarawa State.
“So, the programme is not for Enugu State alone,” Onuzulike further said.
He, however, said the foundation was faced with a lot of financial constraints to purchase the needed start-up materials for its numerous trainees.
“Therefore, we are calling on governments, well-meaning individuals, companies, clubs and organisations to support us financially to enable us meet our targets.
“Providing the materials will offer the trainees an opportunity to practice what they were taught and we have noticed that after graduating, five of 300 will carry on with the business because others lacked the money to start.
“As an industry, we need vehicle, equipment and manpower to make the job easy,” he said.
He also said that the foundation had good monitoring and evaluation team to follow up with graduates of the training to ensure that they were doing what they were supposed to do.
Onuzulike lauded Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for providing the platform at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, tthrough the Ministry of Youths and Sports
He, however, said the foundation needed more government’s support.
He gave assurance that in a few years to come, the local products in Enugu would be from the foundation.
NAN reports that PWF is a non-governmental, community-based humanitarian organisation that offers free vocational and entrepreneurial training to youths and women in Nigeria. (NAN)
