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Building Tomorrow’s Workforce

By Bisi Alabi Williams
06 February 2016   |   8:58 am
UKI is a young, energetic woman with big dreams. Her affective passion is to teach, motivate, consult, groom and connect individuals who want to start and grow excellent careers. Her dad was her hero. “My dad was my hero as a little girl and he still is. When I was much younger, I would ask…
Ukinebo Dare

Ukinebo Dare

UKI is a young, energetic woman with
big dreams. Her affective passion is to
teach, motivate, consult, groom and
connect individuals who want to start and
grow excellent careers. Her dad was her
hero. “My dad was my hero as a little girl
and he still is. When I was much younger, I
would ask him anything and he seemed to
always know the answer. As most young
girls, I felt that he knew everything about
everything. He always taught us about planets,
machines, history and so on”.

She is humbled by the award and very
grateful. She is sincerely glad that the award
is in recognition of all the hard work and
effort that members of her team put into
Poise GFA to train graduates and help them
get jobs. “It is a testament to the dedication
of an amazing group of individuals, whose
passion is to reduce the rate of unemployment
and ensure that every youth in
Nigeria is both employable or self-sufficient.

“I am glad that the Future Awards, Ford
foundation Prize for Youth Employment
has opened the door for partnerships for
PGFA including the doors that may
otherwise have been closed to
us.

Our dreams of what this
nation can be are very big
and this is one more step
in that direction”. They
were interviewed and
judged based on our
performance and
track records.

She
met a lot of inspiring
people along the
way. And won the
award because of her
track record and the
work she had done
and is still doing with
the Poise Graduate
Finishing Academy.

“From
2010 till date, we have
implemented various projects,
trainings and initiatives with
the help of our partners to provide
jobs and raise the employment ratio of
Nigerian youth”.

Her job is interesting because she uses
her office to share the information
that transforms
lives and destinies.

She
loves every
moment
on it. “I
see my
job as
truly amazing because it is exhilarating to
watch someone who has been frustrated in
the job hunt for 3 years, walk into a class and
after only a few weeks of exposure to the
right kind of information, they not only get
a job, but we get calls from their employers
who are raving about how efficient and
excellent they are.

That is my job. If she had
to pick one unique thing about her life, she
would say, “I ignore my limitations and do
exactly what gives me fulfillment. I always
say, ‘Don’t let you, stop you from becoming
the you that makes you happy’.

In essence,
don’t let your limitations stop you from
accomplishing your dreams. Wake Up is my
first published book but I have been writing
for as long as I can remember. I have also
been a columnist and contributor on career
development and personal development
blogs including my own blog and
Newspapers”.

Ukinebo is full of fun, positive
character and determination to see the project
succeed. Given that the Federal government
is very keen on encouraging its young
potentials to look inwards. “ I
believe that we can use this
platform to empower
and equip so
many young
Nigerians.

I
see this
project
as a veritable
platform ready to explode as millions
take advantage of this project to actualize
their dreams. That is why they are inviting
organisations, companies, public – spirited
Nigerians to come to them.

The Edo born lady was born in Kano. She
moved to Lagos at the age of eight. She is
grateful for the strict upbringing given to
her. “My dad and mum would said ‘Focus
on the lessons’ after a good spanking they
would also say ‘it doesn’t matter if you
don’t like the way I am correcting you, just
learn the lessons otherwise it would have
all been a waste of time.

So it didn’t matter
if they shouted at us or embarrassed us in
front of our friends, we were trained to
ignore the means and focus on the message.
Although, correction was painful at the
time, but it is actually a valuable lesson for
life as it has helped them greatly. She learnt
to always be more concerned with learning.
That essential lesson inspired a few
pages other book ‘Wake Up… This is your
life.’

The young mother of two beautiful kids is
an advocate of empowering women, she says, is the only way towards building a
strong and progressive nation where all
people would be free to actualize their
dream. She believes that empowering
Nigerian women socially and economically
is very crucial, not only because it improves
the nation’s GDP, but also because it lays a
solid foundation for the country’s future.
“The reason is simple, the role of women in
raising and grooming the nation’s posterity
is indispensable and the role of women
as mothers and wives is crucial to the stability
of any nation.

“Nigerian women can
help themselves by pulling themselves out
of the shadows and courageously taking on
more active roles. The average Nigerian girl
needs to understand the importance of self
worth and self – awareness, for them not to
compromise their values for anything.
That explains why she dreams of a unified
Nigeria where differences would be a
source of collective strength.

Her plans for
the future is to find other areas through
which they can develop the nation’s youth
and ensure that they contribute meaningfully
to the growth of this great nation.

“Our vision is to reduce unemployment
and produce the best fit graduates.
Thus, we have numbers of intervention
programmes in the works. The biggest of
which, is to partner with capable training
institutions to run PSENSE in various states
nationwide.

From our small corner in Lagos we have
been able to touch over 8,000 lives all over
Nigeria. Imagine the multiplication of that
impact if we could partner with employability
trainers nationwide to deliver the
PSENSE curriculum.
I am also on a campaign for employers to
make workspaces that allow people with
various disabilities to thrive and contribute
greatly to organizational growth. We are in
search of partners and sponsors for these
initiatives.

Life in her view is about positioning. And
that is why positioning at poise means
training and changing lives just by helping
them improve their knowledge, attitude,
skills and also by helping them build new
experiences that give them the right positioning
in life.

They have always believed
that information changes people and good
information, changes them for the better.
Interestingly, her job chose her. “As to
whether my job chose me of if I chose it, I
think it was a two-waystreet. We ran into
each other and fell in love with each other.
This love blossom and has touched thousands
of lives”.

In order to transform lives, her desire was
to do it through more informal means
because her career was in a completely
different field. Thus, the mission of
Poise Nigeria is to transform the
individual to positively impact the
society, which makes it the perfect
place for her to be. It’s therefore
no wonder that she passionately
loves poise.
Outside training,
Ukinebo is a passionate
writer, blogger and columnist.
In her book ‘Wake
Up’, she noted that the
problem with normal
is that normal is normal.

“Everyday, I strive to be unique and different
in everything I do so that I can encourage
those around me to be comfortable in being
themselves. Not just any version of themselves,
but the most amazing version they can
possibly be. I always encourage and push my
students to dig deep into themselves and
refuse to blend in with the wallpaper.
She believes that life’s treasure is a concentration
of riches, often one that is considered lost
or forgotten until being rediscovered.
Interestingly, Ukinebo is so blessed to have
found hers.

Her most treasured column is
‘Two Words’ which is featured weekly in
Guardian Newspaper. But rather than keep
her treasure to herself, she enjoys sharing
hers. “Two years ago I was the editor for a
career development magazine for a National
newspaper but interestingly, in spite of all
this, I still find it difficult to call myself a
writer. I love to write because I love to share
information so to me, I am a teacher and
sometimes I teach through writing but I do
more of my teaching through facilitation,
especially in the area of Employability Skills
and Career development”.

Life has truly been good to her.“ My
number one mentor is God, simply because of
the way he loves, corrects and guides. The
extent to which he will go to polish and make
us better still blows my mind each time I
think about it. I try to live by the WWJD motto
as much as possible. My dad is still my hero
and I strive to be like him, he has set some
records in his life and career that I can only
pray to live up to, she says with a sweet smile.

With an enriched smile, she
went down memory lane and recalled how
many things she wanted to do and be at the
same time. She recalled how her dad told her
about the story of the accomplished, Oba
Otudeko and all that he was doing and achieving
at that time. Ukinebo was truly fascinated.

The true – life story inspired her greatly. “Oba
Otudeko has been one of my role models. I
believed that it was possible for a man to be
successful doing so many things at the same
time. I never thought this was possible that
one person with a good job would so wonderfully
and directly impacted on the family until
that day.

“As a training and capacity building
school, she explained that one of the things
they get right is ensuring that their students
get to learn how to impact other people’s lives.
This is part of the curriculum for them to execute
charitable projects and learn a lot from
that experience. For instance, a young person
who feels helpless because he has no job and
no money, yet, he raises money to donate a
borehole to a community. All of a sudden,
such a person soon realizes their biggest asset
is their mind and the determination to make
something out of nothing.

“It is this unique
ability to be able to bring out the best in others
that has endeared poise to the heart of
many big time employers, captains of industries
and corporate organizations as the
dependably ally in building successful business.
It even earned us numerous awards
including the BusinessDay 40 under 40 Award
for excellence in Nigeria”.

The “Making An
Impact Project”, which is targeted at empowering
Nigerian youths, is one project that is
very dear to her heart and those of them at
Poise Graduate Finishing Academy. The making
an impact project was conceived as a
result of the 87% employment currently staring
at employers and the Nigerian nation in
the face. “Every day we get a lot of applications
from intelligent hardworking graduates who
cannot afford employability skills training asking
for scholarships.

It was not easy turning
such people away when you can see that they
have the raw materials of being a star employee.
So we took it upon ourselves to raise funds
for scholarships for any young graduate out
there who wants to improve themselves and
be a valuable member of society by getting trained

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