ACUF trains youths on entrepreneurship, leadership skills

A non-profit organisation, Amaka Chiwuike-Uba Foundation (ACUF), has moved to tackle some of the challenges facing youths in Nigeria by training them on entrepreneurship and leadership skills under the YouDal workshop series.

In a statement, Chiwuike Uba, executive director, ACUF, enumerated some of these challenges as lack of knowledge to envision and execute strategic leadership processes and effective management, inadequate skills for entrepreneurship, lack of ability to participate in governance and effect social change, as well as weaknesses in setting personal and vocational goals.

Uba stated that the YouDaL workshop series would encourage youths to take up leadership responsibilities.

“The workshop series aims to promote youth leadership development, education and employment, to support healthy lifestyle and foster the participation of all the youths into all aspects of society at national, state and local government levels. The mission is to transform lives and build nations,” Uba said.

According to him, despite that youths account for more than 50 per cent of Nigeria’s population, over 60 per cent of them are unemployed and very insignificant number are in government.

He argued that contrary to the known and often used phrase – the youths are the leaders of tomorrow-, the youths are also leaders of today.

He argued that youths are neither equipped to seize present opportunities in leadership nor are they prepared to take future opportunities.

“It is incontrovertible that everyone has unique strengths and challenges that hinder their path of success. To confront the challenges, visioning and goal setting are required.

“Goal-setting helps us to separate our strengths from our weaknesses and make realistic plans for improving our lives. It also provides the needed focus and context to a mentor pair.

“To address this problem, ACUF’s inaugural YouDAL Workshop Series scheduled to hold in Enugu, will focus on Visioning and Goal Setting,” he added.

Uba noted that the training workshop methodology shall include individual exercises and reflections, stories and scenarios, small and large group discussions, activities and games, role-playing exercises and team projects and exercises.

He urged the youths to key into the programme as participation to the training workshop is free of charge. “However, due to limited available space, participation to the training workshop shall be focused only on registration.”