Yemisi Izuora
The Foundation For Skills Development, FSD, has graduated over ten thousand young entrepreneurs across various vocations, as part of its development initiative to create jobs through skill acquisition.
The Managing Director, MD, of the foundation Mrs. Omowale Ogunrinde, said during the graduation ceremony of a fresh batch of entrepreneurs in Lagos that the initiative has helped many young jobless people to become successful entrepreneurs.
According to her, the Foundation has amazing success stories to share as 50 per cent of the 295 people who graduated from the school about four weeks have been gainfully employed through the Foundation’s monitoring and evaluation team.
Speaking on how she established the Foundation, Ogunrinde said, “I started this in my local church to give back to the less privileged in the year 2003 and by 2005 I realized that the calling over my life was not just for my local church and that it was for the community at large and as you can see for those we have trained today I don’t even think there is anybody from my church so we cut across all religious affiliations and what we have done consistently from 1st of may 2003 till today is to give people professional skills that they can use to change Improve on their incomes and thereby transform their livelihood.”
She said the Foundation has been working in partnership with NAGODE to impact training and skills but in batches of 20 and this is the 4th batch.
The managing director, commended NAGODE, because it helps trainees through various forms support by empowering them immediately after graduation with equipment and six month down the line they ensure that the graduates remain in business by supporting them with interest free loan.
“They are not not just helping us in the training but empowering, equipping and ensuring that they continue to make money for themselves to help their families,,like you have seen today it is an awesome experience because they all come back to share their testimony and success story so as to inspire the new ones coming up and everybody tries their best to make the community a better place.” she said.
“We have trained over ten thousand people and we have all their records. We need more partners, as I am talking now we are operating in various states in Nigeria, and we can only sustain that with partners.”
She said she went into training of people because she felt the hardship of young people in her local church and decided to move out from the church to help people in the community and has been able to reach this stage because of partners like NAGODE.