Danjuma Foundation graduates 50 IDPs in skills acquisition

Theophilus Danjuma Foundation in partnership with All Children Charity International Foundation (ACCIF) has successfully graduated 50 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

The three months training took place in Pegi village, a suburb in the Kuje Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Abuja.

The training was aimed at empowering and strengthening the internally displaced persons to be able to generate income, take care of their families and improve their quality of lives. Participants were trained in bead and shoe making, sewing, among others.

The Chief Executive Officer of TY Danjuma Foundation, Dr. Sunday Udoh, commended the trainees for the successful course and urged them to be good ambassadors of the organizers.
Udoh said: “In partnership with ACCIF, the foundation is happy to contribute its quo­ta in this direction, through skills acquisition training for displaced persons at Pegi village. I encourage the beneficiaries to make judicious use of the skills and train others as well.”

The Founder of ACCIF, Ranti Daudu, urged the public to patronize the goods produced by the trainees, adding that they were of high quality, and if well encouraged, would boost the country’s economy.

Her words: “There is no need importing goods we can produce locally. One of the ways to encourage this is patronage and rebranding. The displaced persons came into this camp depressed, but today they have acquired skills that will make them self-reliant.
“We have given them all the materials and equipment they need to setup individually, unlike other projects where we do community grouping for intervention. This is because we feel that whenever they choose to go back home or, in future, they may not all be together in a single place; so they can benefit from it individually.”

Daudu explained that the foundation concentrates on Pegi because it is an interior village, which is too far for benefactors to come. She stressed that the difficulties and traumas the IDPs were facing were part of the Foundation’s drive to rescue them so as to give them hope, adding that, a baseline method was used to select the beneficiaries who lost their occupations as a result of the insurgency.

In his remarks, representative of Pegi Community Leader, Jeremiah Sarki, commended the organization for organizing such a vocational training, stating that it will go a long way to make them self-reliant. He called on other stakeholders to emulate the kind gesture of the Foundations.

Responding on behalf of the beneficiaries, Jacob Ndirmbula who is Pastor, thanked the Foundation for empowering them saying they are indeed lucky to have received such a good gesture from the foundations.
He stated: “We have lived here and we have gotten a life that has changed our situation.”
He added that when normalcy returns to Chibok, they will be willing to go back to their homes.
The beneficiaries, after being trained in business skills, were also individually given materials and equipment for their start-up businesses, among which include: sewing machines, filing machines, electric irons and generators.