Ladi Memorial Foundation (LMF) says it has conducted vocational training for about 600 youths within the past five years in Nigeria.

The foundation, Development Diaries gathered, recently conducted training in skills like tailoring, baking, and art work for 32 youths, most of whom were vulnerable.

Rising unemployment and the Covid-19 pandemic are all impacting the ability of young Nigerians to find job.

Nigeria’s unemployment rate, as at 2020 second quarter, stood at 27.1 percent, up from the 23.1 percent recorded in 2018, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Unemployment among young people aged between 15 and 34 stood at 34.9 percent, while 28.7 percent were underemployed.

The aim of the nonprofit is to empower the youth and women to be self-reliant and provide them with a platform to acquire life-changing carrier coaching and mentoring.

‘For the past five years the NGO has been in existence, we have been rendering vocational services to both in- and out-of-school students at various levels’, founder of the organisation, Rosemary Osikoya, said in Abuja.

‘We have so far trained about 600 youths, most of them vulnerable in the society. We are helping them to access livelihood equipment and to give them hope’.

‘A lot of them (trainees) sat down on the sewing machine for the first time in July, but today they can make cloths for themselves and others.

‘It shows that if we give them longer time or teach them within the period of three years, as we have in junior or senior secondary schools, we can have people with real skills at the end of their formal education’.

She urged educational institutions at various levels to adopt modules in skills acquisition, so as to equip students with skills for employment.

Photo source: Ladi Memorial Foundation