Olufemi Adediran The Youth Centre for Industrial Training, an arm of the Peter Akinola Foundation, on Tuesday,, flagged off a nine-month training programme for 134 youths in Ogun State.
The beneficiaries are being trained in building construction, metal and aluminium fabrication, ICT, fashion designing, electrical installation and catering.
The foundation also distributed working tools to the beneficiaries.
The Director of the foundation, Tunde Awolana said the training centre has graduated no fewer than 1,500 youths in the last 14 years.
According to Awolana, the foundation was set up by the former Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria, Peter Akinola to train youths and equip them with the necessary entrepreneurial skills that will help them become self-reliant.
Awolana said, “The foundation is established primarily to get Nigerian youths who are at the crossroads of their lives out of the streets and give them skills and then get them back into the system so that they can be self-sustaining and help the society.
“We have six departments – concreting, tiling, metal fabrication and aluminium, ICT, catering, fashion and electrical installation.
“What we are doing today is to make sure that, they acquire skills and they acquire tools and equipment. They must be used to those tools and the equipment within the nine months they are going to spend here.
“We make sure that the training is 70 per cent practical and 30 per cent theory. The students can sit for NBTE exams which will make them to be at par with their counterparts in OND, HND and probably BSc but strictly in skills acquisition.
“In the last 14 years, we must have turned out no fewer than 1,500 graduates and the feedback we get from them is encouraging.”
In his remarks, the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo charged philanthropists and other well-meaning Nigerians to support the government by training and engaging the youths in productive activities.
“Government cannot do everything and we should not expect them to do everything, so we are calling our people whatever that they can do to improve the lots of the people, especially the youths they should not hesitate to do it.
“This is the effort of one man sent by God and he attracted people to himself and God has now helped him to raise this institution to the level that it is today”, Alake said.
