Sunday Ehigiator
LAPO Microfinance Bank, in collaboration with National Directorate of Employment (NDE), the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB) and Ministry of Women Affairs (MWA), has trained about 600 entrepreneurs on different skills acquisition across the nation.
The pilot scheme, which started in January 2016, was undertaken in Lagos and Benin and extended to other states in 2017, 2018 and 2019, to help small businesses grow.
The training, according to a statement by the Managing Director, LAPO MfB, Dr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe, was in line with the sustainable development goals of the bank to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
“The bank believes that beyond work-specific skills, emphasis must be placed on developing high-level cognitive and non-cognitive/transferable skills, such as problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, communication skills and conflict resolution, which can be used across a range of occupational fields.
“This belief stimulated the bank to ensure that the same standard training is made available to its clients’ children across the country in their respective communities enabling them to acquire national standard training and become future employers of labour.”
The statement further explained that, a core part of the training was the promotion of female gender inclusion and empowerment of the girl child to engage in the promotion of small scale businesses.
“LAPO also endeavours to pay for the cost of training and consumables on behalf of all clients’ children at no recourse to the client. So far, the statement said states that have benefitted in the acquisition till date include Edo, Lagos, Osun, Abuja, Kaduna, Ondo and Kwara states.
“The beneficiaries were trained in fashion design, ICT, catering, hair dressing, textiles design, adult literacy, photography, automobile, interior decoration and barbing.
“The selection of nominees was carried out during the bank’s branch council meetings organised for branch customers and conducted in the same manner as the scholarship selection and balloting process. The program runs concurrently with the scholarship program for the process of nominating awardees,” he added.
