Firm relaunches academy to tackle unemployment

• Decries increase in redundancy rate
Poise Graduate Finishing Academy (PGFA), a subsidiary of Poise Nigeria, has relaunched its employability certification programme (PSENSE) for youths who intend to grow and meet evolving demands in the career world as a means to reduce unemployment in Nigeria.
 
While speaking at a press conference, Chief Marketing Officer , PGFA, Asher Adeniyi, said the academy has adopted a new curriculum, which has been approved by the National Universities Commission (NUC) to focus on young executives who intend to get a job or change their current occupation but lack the skills to do so.
 
Adeniyi pointed at the National Bureau of Statistics released that unemployment rate has galloped, with 2017 having 13.41 percent and this year 23.10 percent, but expressed excitement over the academy’s achievements in the last two years.He said, “We are excited with the feedback we have gotten for the past two years. Last year, we had 85 percent employment rate and these year, we achieved 90 percent employment rate from our graduates.”
 
Adeniyi explained that youths are willing to work, but are constantly faced with the challenges of not being aware how to go about it, thus the importance of such training and the inclusion of experiential learning process.The academy runs a 10 weeks programme focused on soft skills needed in the workplace, after which the individual is issued a certificate after the duration of the programme.
 
According to Adeniyi, “The first five weeks would be essentially targeted towards global soft skills programmes like problem solving, self-management skills among others and the remaining weeks at learning other global skills needed for youth employability, such as ICT, business analysis, marketing and human resources. This would significantly improve the capacity of young executives that come through our programme.
 
“As an effort to ensure practical learning, a seed capital of N10,000 is given to the students during the course of their training to trade within a week and return the money with an interest of 20 percent. Through such experience you learn leadership, teamwork, ownership amongst others.”
 
Chief Operating Officer, Nonye Cally-Bechi, said the academy was birthed after it was observed that so many graduates are not employable because they lack employability skills, noting, “This academy was started to bridge the gap between what we have in our tertiary institutions and what is needed in the work place, to enable the youths fit into the system easily.”
 
Cally-Bechi noted that in the past eight years, the academy has trained about 40,00 youths on essential employability skills, some of which are on problem solving, management, initiative and communication. She stated that in giving back to the society, the organization trains youth on ICT and Digital Design skills through its academy known as Ekobits.
 
“For about three years now POISE has been involved in a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program known as Ekobit Academy which involves training secondary school graduates from the less priviledged areas of the state, who cannot afford to further their education to the university on ICT skills.” She added.