SPDC Trains 5,000 N’Delta Youths …30 Rivers PWD Graduate

No fewer than 5,000 Niger Delta youths have benefitted from the Shell LiveWire programme since its inception in 2003.
The General Manager, Sustainable Development and Community Relations of the company, Mr. Nedo Osayande disclosed this last Wednesday at the graduation and closing ceremony of 2014 Shell LiveWIRE Nigeria Programme Awards for Persons With Disabilities in Rivers State held at Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt.
He said, out of the number, 2,700 have been assisted to set up their own businesses through business start-up awards.
The General Manager, who was represented at the event by the company’s Government and Community Relations Manager, Mr. Fufeyin Funkakpo said the objective of the programme was to encourage young people between the ages of 18 and 35 to start their own businesses and to consider self-employment as a desirable career option.
“Our goal is to build capacity for business through access to entrepreneurship training and business development. These core commercial skills are combined with the necessary start-up capital with focus on expanding or increasing youth-owned businesses in the states”, he said.
Thirty youths of Rivers State with disabilities graduated in the current edition of the programme. The graduands comprised 10 blind, 10 deaf and dumb, and 10 physically challenged persons.
According to the General Manager, this was the first time that the programme was focusing on persons with disabilities, and they were trained on barbing, shoe making, phone repairs and tailoring.
Generators, sewing machines, tool boxes for shoe making, different soft and hardwares were amongst the starter-packs given to beneficiaries while each of them also got N200,000.
The programme was executed in partnership with the Rivers State Ministry of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation.

Chris Oluoh

L-R: Director and Project Coordinator, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Mr Henry Otowo, Chief Executive Officer of NEPC, Mr Olusegun Awolowo and ITC Export Quality Expert, Mrs Ludovica Ghizzoni, at a workshop on expanding export of sesame seed and sheanut butter from Nigeria in Abuja last Wednesday.