This paper will present a report of skill acquisition project being carried out by SIFE Students, University of Port-Harcourt SIFE Team. University of Port-Harcourt is located within the four communities in Rivers State of Nigeria. These communities are Choba, Emoha, Alakahia and Alua and have the same characteristics with rest of the communities in the Niger Delta Region of the country. Niger Delta Region is a rich oil producing area in Nigeria. Thus many oil exploration and exploitation activities have taken place in the communities for the past several years. There are so many multinational oil companies operating in the area though there is nothing to show for the huge amount of money being generated from the natural resources being produced in the land. The people of these communities are mainly fishermen and agro-farmers. The major sources of their livelihood are being desecrated, degraded and destroyed by oil spillage and gas flaring, thus the people have no alternative than to lean and hope on oil money and have in most cases abandoned their little means of livelihood. the youth have left schools in pursuit of oil money. This has left a long time of neglect and gross under development. The resultant effect has been a youth restiveness, and loss of focus among the youth. So it is necessary to develop other skills, apart from their natural skill in fishing and farming, which will help them to make a living. As most of the youths are within the age bracket of 20-35 years, they are either school dropouts, have not attended school at all, unskilled or are unemployed, they need skills that will help them to make a living on their own, or to increase their chances of being hired by a company, this is the main justification for this project. The university students, who are also youths in this age bracket, in conjunction with university responsiveness to the societal needs decided to make their own contribution in the development of their fellow youths who are disadvantaged.
Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) is a global network, based in USA, aimed at improving the quality of life of people around the world by teaching them the principles and values of free market economics and entrepreneurship. This is achieved by training and motivating students to form management teams. These teams then design and implement several education and community based projects that create and expand economic opportunities for people in and around the communities where their institutions are located. The University of Port Harcourt is one of the over 45 institutions of higher education in Nigeria where SIFE has their presence under the management of SIFE Nigeria. The University of Port Harcourt SIFE Team has since inception about five years ago, designed, developed and executed several projects with different partners that have had far reaching impact on the target audience (Uniport SIFE Team annual report, 2008; Uche, 2009).
Identify a pool of a minimum of 200 unemployed youth and women who do not have a means of livelihood as a result of low skills set.
Train them in skills that will help them become self reliant and productive in the community.
Raise fund to start micro-enterprises for the most successful trainees.
Monitor their progress to ensure good practice of values and principles of free market economy.
The skill acquisition program, tagged SKILL FOR LIFE PROJECT, is being sponsored by SIFE Nigeria in partnership with University of Port-Harcourt. The project is essentially a skills acquisition program designed to empower the uneducated, unskilled, unemployed and economically disadvantaged youth in the communities around the University of Port-Harcourt with different vocational skills that will make them to become not only productive and self reliant, but also give them the chance of becoming active participants in the economic activities in their community. The project will be executed in three phases; the pre-training stage, the training stage and the post training stage. There are 200 youths from the four communities surrounding the University and 20 trainers being involved in the project. The participants are separated into five groups according to the five different skills being taught. University of Port-Harcourt SIFE students will be solely in charge of the project planning and execution processes (skill need assessment, identification of skills required, recruitment of the youths through the community heads, engagement of facilitators/trainers, monitoring and supervision of the training, raising fund to establish the best participants and follow-up program after the training). The project which has already started will last until August, 2010. The closing/grant presentation ceremony which marks the end of the training will feature a presentation of grants and materials to the most successful trainees to start up their own micro-enterprises. The team is also required to provide accounting and marketing support for the grants beneficiary and work closely with them in order to ensure the sustainability of their new enterprises. This paper will also present the areas of great achievement of the project as well as the challenges encountered by both the youths, students and the university during the period of the project.
Will be presented at the end of the project.
Students will teach the trainees the values and principles of free market economy.
The university management will be directly involved in the opening and closing/grants presentation ceremonies where the family members and the community leaders will also be in attendance.
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