Ugo Aliogo
The Junior Achievement Nigeria (JAN) has gone into partnership with the African Capital Alliance Foundation (ACA Foundation) and others to train members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in venture in management programme (VIMP).
The programme is aimed at building their the NYSC members’ skills in business leadership through a one week mini-Master of Business Administration (MBA).
Speaking at a networking event organised by JAN for the NYSC members to meet with their sponsors and alumni of the mini-MBA recently in Lagos, the Executive Director, JAN, Simi Nwogugu, said VIMP was designed for outstanding youth corp members who have demonstrated leadership potential.
She also noted that in getting the NYSC members who participated in the VIMP, they opened up applications in October 2018, where they received many applications from across the country.
Nwogugu added that during that the period, the corp members were taught the nitty-gritty of running a business successfully, the issues in Nigeria and how can they as leaders become the solutions for those issues, they do a Corporative Social Responsibility (CSR) activity when they go out and do some communities service projects.
According to Nwogugu, “Accenture who is a partner board member with Junior Achievement, they go through all the application materials. They select the top hundred and then the sponsoring partner is African Capital Alliance Foundation, they sponsor the programme.
“They interviewed the top 70 persons from whom they selected 50. So, by the time this 50 came for the programme, they screened them for leadership potential, for intelligence, for people that would have the heart to be conscientious business leaders which is what our mission is at JAN; is to inspire and educate young people to become conscientious business leaders, ethical and excellent business leaders.
“And then we bring them to the Lagos Business School for a week where they do different courses on strategy, entrepreneurship, financial Management and things like that.”
In her remarks, a member of the External Relation Unit, African Capital Alliance, Wendy Emesie, noted that JAN is one the organisations that has been aligning towards their mission and focus areas as an organization.
She also noted that the VIMP initiative is one of the philanthropic programmes targeted at NYSC students, adding that it is a mini-MBA course which helps the students develop into business leaders across entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial education and governance and ethics.
Emesie, added the programme help to increase their work readiness skills as well, “it is not just the entire programme that it is aligned to what we do, but what we feel will be most be beneficial for us in our support.”
“The VIMP initiative is been awesome. I mean, from increasing the employment rate, to just creating a platform where students are mentored on how they can scale in their careers and find their footing in the market place, I think it’s been great. There have been great feedbacks so far. We partner with organisations whose mission is in line to ours. A few of them would be, Feed Foundation, Ignatus Nigeria, the NESGN,” Emesie added.
