Rotary trains 20 unemployed graduates in skills

ROTARY International, District 9125 has initiated a programme, ‘Rotary Employability Skills Temp (REST), under which it will train young unemployed graduates to enhance their employability skills in public organizations.

Speaking  in Abuja, the initiator of the programme and first lady of the Rotary District 9125, Oluwayemisi Omotosho, said the training  programme is also aimed at helping unemployed youths to discover self and ability, not only focusing on getting a job but to be self- employed.

She explained that the programme gives unemployed graduates within the ages of 20 to 35 the opportunity to go through a thorough skills and values improvement process obtaining the required employability skills in the process.

She said: “This programme aims at creating a bridge between unemployed youths and organizations. We did a bit of research and we discovered that all the noise about creating more jobs is not the problem because there are a lot of organizations in Abuja that are looking for employees. When we spoke to them they all said that Nigerians are not employable. A lot of these organizations are employing graduates from Diaspora and rather pay more because they claim our graduates just have pieces of paper, that they don’t know anything.

“As a club, we have decided that this year, we will be a gift to the world and by that we are working as a team to connect these two groups – unemployed graduates and organizations. And we are here to transfer that skill to them and they will leave the programme as talents not just as crude labour.”

She noted that each participant would be immediately placed in different organizations to utilize their newly developed skills. They would be trained in practical work experience and mentorship for a minimum of three months.

Omotosho urged youths to wake up from their slumber to the reality of life, maintaining that most unemployed youths are looking for white-collar jobs and by so would not want to develop their individual vocational skills and ability.

“My message to the youth is for them to wake up, the truth of the matter is that a job has to be a means to an end and not the end, a lot of Nigerian youths don’t understand what it means to work, or what a job is, but this programme is for them to repackage and be rebranded, to teach one’s self and continuously learn and develop themselves so that they can become valuable and then get the job.

“Many youths have incredible vocational skills that they can use to create jobs for themselves and for others, but instead they are waiting for a white collar job that will give them N20000, we are saying, broaden your horizon, sharpen your thinking, do things differently, discover who you are and use that information to get a job and if you don’t create something and be innovative,” she stressed.

She added: “This programme doesn’t only train them it also places them and as they leave, letters are been given to each participants to an organization, which takes them to train and mentor on the job for three month and if very effective and productive they will be given appointment letters in that organization.”