The United States African Development Foundation (USADF) has partnered the Field of Skills and Dreams VTE Academy and the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) to provide entrepreneurial training to 400 youths.

The grant award was signed at a ceremony on Tuesday by USADF CEO Travis Adkins, Oyindamola Egbeyemi, the LSETF director of programmes and coordination and the founder of the institute, Omowale Ogunrinde, at the FSD office in Oko-Oba, Agege.

The programme is targeted at training the selected youths aged 18 and 35 for 12 weeks to acquire skills such as catering and hospitality, green fashion design, and natural hair and beauty care.

The programme is part of efforts by the three partners to address youth unemployment in the state by improving job skills and employment outcomes in the hospitality and fashion sectors.

According to the organisers, certified trainees will be placed in a three-month internship with employers in various sectors relative to their learned skills after completing the training programme.

Mr Adkins said the programme would help women and youths in Lagos cultivate their talents and help them “to find ways for them to create employability skills for themselves,” including life skills, and to create a path for themselves to either start their businesses as entrepreneurs or to find jobs and be placed in jobs that will allow them to support their families, and hopefully, for those that will be entrepreneurial to be able to even be job creators for other people.

Ms Ogunrinde said, “Employers are actually desperate to have people with skills, and that’s what made the work easy. Give them professional skills, and they will surely get jobs, or they will have the skills to work for themselves.

“That’s what the economy needs, and that’s what has helped a lot of young people in Nigeria.”

Samuel Adegoke, a trainee in heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration, who will graduate on Wednesday, said, “I still want to be with an established firm to learn first very well before I go out there so that I can be able to have vast knowledge, then I can now build on that, so I can yes, I’m ready to be on my own.”