Anambra’s ‘1 Youth 2 Skills Solution’… Evolving Into Bigger Businesses

By Chuka Nnabuife

Not always do even the most gifted seer foresee how things would turn out from very humble beginnings.
The story of the ‘1 Youth 2 Skills Solution’ of Anambra State’s Ministry of Youth Development is beginning to turn out a subject worthy of study on how small things evolve into big ones within a short time. The program, primarily aimed at selecting Anambra youths in batches and teaching them skills that they can build on and become self-employed persons or employers of others has already recorded some successful entrepreneurs within less than two years. Some of the young entrepreneurs are already evolving into rallying points and mobilizers of opinions in their various communities given the influence they have on the various youths they have brought under their wings too.
Similarly, some of the graduates of the program have organised themselves into cooperative societies to expand the coast of their businesses.
An event held recently in Awka buttressed these feats of the program.
It was the maiden rally of the Solution YouthPreneurs Support Group (SYPSG). The event marked by topical discourses on business, social machination and networking featured presentations by erudite speakers, comprising business school professors, commissioners and frontline members of government and leaders of society. Director of the UNIZIK Business School of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Prof. Chinedu Onyizugbe was among the speakers as well as the state’s Commissioner for Trade and Commerce, Christian Udechukwu.
It was like a business seminar dotted by motivation speeches but what thrilled most was young entrepreneurs knowledge and zest for their business, especially their keenness for opportunities to establish their footholds and expand their market share in society. The young business operators were equally keen on knowing the roles they can play socially and politically to protect their small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
Asked how the young people who have only been in their ventures of interest for a short while through the ‘1 Youth 2 Skills Solution’ program turned out to be so keen and positive about them, Anambra State’s Commissioner for Youth Development, Patrick Agha Mba chuckled.
“It is a result of how they were trained. We trained them in a holistic way, practically, theoretically and in the general ways of doing the variable businesses they choose in our society. They had sessions in UNIZIK Business School. So they came out, whole and well grounded,” he explained.
Mr. Agha Mba disclosed that the SYPSG initiative was an idea of the graduates of the skills acquisition scheme, establishing how socially and business savvy they are. Possibly, it is the high awareness of how business and society work in sync and their orientation in business networking that made SYPSG spread seamlessly through all the 21 local government areas of Anambra State.
One factor SYPSG establish is that the ‘1 Youth 2 Skills Solution’ offers good orientation to Anambra youths who pass through its tutelage.