National Youth Service Corp
As part of its commitment to nation-building, top technology company, Intel, has unveiled a value-adding initiative to train National Youth Service Corp Members on technology and entrepreneurship.
According to the management of the company, the one-week free training is the first of several that will stretch across other states of the Federation; with Lagos being the initial state in the pilot phase of the Technology and Entrepreneurship project.
“The Training of Youth Corp Members is part of Intel’s Corporate Social Responsiveness to the educational needs of our society. The week long free training strives to equip youth corps members with necessary skills to cope in the 21st Century workplace taking them through an intense technology-entrepreneurship scheme,” said the Corporate Affairs Manager, Intel West Africa, Osagie Ogunbor, in his opening address that kick-started the recent training.
Ogunbor noted that the initiative, more than anything, was borne out of the necessity to stimulate interest in entrepreneurship towards establishing businesses and ultimately reducing the increasing unemployment problem in Nigeria.
“The changing trends in the global economy are increasingly becoming knowledge-based being driven by advances in Information and Communication Technology and this has significantly raised the stakes in the labour market,” Ogunbor further stated.
He went on to state that as graduates preparing to enter the labour market, the possession of technical knowledge on its own would not suffice, but ownership of complementary life skills to deliver the highest possible value in any field of endeavor was the ultimate task.
Ogunbor said Intel is working closely with the Youth Enterprise With Innovation In Nigeria (YOUWIN) to further encourage the growth of individual businesses as part of a solution to unemployment. Courtesy of YOUWIN, the youth corps members being trained are entered into a business plan competition where they stand a chance of getting seed capital for businesses they may want to set up.
According to Ogunbor, this initiative is just one of several other technology/education based initiatives championed by Intel towards improving the quality of life of people around the world.