The Lagos State government, through the state Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA), is targeting over 5,000 vulnerable people to benefit from its Livelihood Support Programme.

Toyin Salami, the head of the Disbursement Link Indicator (DL.1.3), WAPA, Lagos State, made this known during a two-day training on Friday.

The livelihood support initiative is being implemented under the ‘Nigeria Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus (NCARES) DL.1.3.’

The programme aims to assist economically active but struggling individuals, vulnerable youths, and women in the state with their businesses.

The state’s WAPA is one of the delivery platforms of the Community Action for Resilience and Economic Stimulus of NCARES projects in Lagos.

Ms Salami said all the beneficiaries were sourced from the state’s social register of poor and vulnerable residents.

She explained that over 25,000 names were mined from this register, and the criteria is that the beneficiaries must be active in business.

“They will be given soft training that can further boost their businesses. A one-off grant payment will also be made to their various bank accounts through a payment service provider to support their business growth.

“We have been in all the local governments in the first and second phases of the programme, so far, over 2,500 have benefitted.

“Now, our target is 5,000 beneficiaries; we trained over 1,200 yesterday and hope to move to communities with our field officers and the state register for more beneficiaries,” she said.

Saudat Salami, a facilitator at Coker Aguda Local Council Development Area, said the training would equip the beneficiaries, who are primarily microbusiness owners, on how to succeed with the grants.

Ms Salami said one of the challenges deterring small and medium enterprises from succeeding was a lack of entrepreneurship skills.

She urged the beneficiaries to aim higher by registering their businesses, learning bookkeeping, and marketing them, particularly using social media.

One of the participants at the training, Arike Adeyemi, said she learnt how to engage others about her business on social media platforms.

Ms Adeyemi, who was a caterer, said she also learnt to keep account of everything about her business, including transportation fares and packaging.

 (NAN)