By DANIELA ITOE NGUM
In order to reduce the frustration of most youths in Kumba who are out of school due to the ongoing crisis and to empower internally displaced youths who roam the streets of the metropolis on a daily basis, some individuals of goodwill have taken upon themselves to equip these youths with entrepreneurial skills through a five-day seminar.
The seminar that took place at PC Kumba-Mbeng from March 12 to March 16, was organized by Friends for the Lost Foundation in association with Alpha Services Foundation centered on career building and youth entrepreneurship.
According to the initiator and self-sponsor of the program who doubles as the founder of the Friends for the Lost Foundation, the Reverend Pastor of Presbyterian Church, PC Kumba-Mbeng, Rev. Lamsin Saibo Nakeka the seminar is meant to equip the youths with entrepreneurial skills that can help them to be self-employed during this period.
‘The seminar is all about empowering the young people during this time of crisis that can give them a long term vision and that will make them to be self-employed. It is also meant to give them capacities and motivations and to know that there is still something ahead with or without their parents they can be able to make their lives’, the Pastor noted.
Rev. Saibo said have become idle as a result of the crisis as such there is need to endow the young with capacities that can help them to be independent.
Ekinde one of the participants recounted some of the things he was privilege to learn from the seminar.
‘I’ll like to thank the Reverend Pastor of PC Kumba-Mbeng, Rev. Lamsin Saibo for bringing youths together due to the crisis we are facing and making sure that we can still study something of importance despite the education problem in the region. What I have learned these days is so wonderful, the facilitators taught us how to make up a CV that you can use to find an employment, we were taught how to make; solid and liquid soaps, beads, paper bags, pastries, coupled with lectures on career orientation, project planning and management, health tips on Hepatitis B, dating to marriage and daily morning meditation from the Reverend Pastor’, he said.
Another participant averred that the knowledge acquire from the seminar will improve her entrepreneurial skills.
‘It will help me to upgrade my entrepreneurial skills especially in the domain of marketing. You must know what you are best at doing’, she said.
The Project Coordinator and Founder of Alpha Services Foundation, Henry Itoe on his part, thank God for seeing them through successfully. He called on the participants not lie on their lorries but to go out and enterprise themselves by creating jobs and empowering other persons.
At the end of the seminar the youths are expected to put into practice what they have learned.
‘At the end of the day, I want them to put these capacities into action if they can be able to learn beads there is a lady who is there to teach them, she is even better off than some civil servants, so if they have these capacities and we in our foundation can be able to give them little things to take off so that they should not remain idle. If they don’t put these things into practice, I’ll be very disappointed but I know with the enthusiasm they are showing they will put them into practice and they will better their lives’, the Pastor noted.
The seminar ended up with youths showcasing what they have learned and issuing of diplomas to the participants.