APWEN Holds Career Fair to Bridge Town,

Funmi​ Ogundare

The Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN) recently held a town and gown mentoring/career fair for young engineers aimed at bridging the gap between female engineering students and the industry.

The programme sponsored by Worley Foundation was themed ‘Industry-Focused Capacity Building’.

Speaking at the programme held in Lagos, the president of the association, Dr Elizabeth Eterigho, noted that the vision of the town and gown series, which kicked off in 2020, is to create a pool of ‘ready-now’ female engineers and an avenue for the recruitment of bright young talents.
She added that it also serves as a mechanism to assist the nation in attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

​”The first series started in 2020 through 2021 comprised of STEM Education, diversity and inclusion projects that impacted communities in the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria,” she said, adding that the feedback had shown an impact on the young engineers through job placement among the various industries.​
President of Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE), Tasiu Gidari Wudil, expressed delight about the programme and commended APWEN’s efforts.

In his keynote, the guest of honour, Robert Azibaola, said he believed that young people, especially engineers, can change things for the better if they put their mind to it and have passion for what they do.

Azibaola stated, “We are so prayerful in this part of the world, but it seems that our development has been thwarted. As engineers, we should be able to think very fast. You can believe in religion, but work had to try to solve the problem of society. Once you are able to think about invention, distance it from spirituality.”