The Zamfara Community and Social Development Agency, CSDA, on Wednesday trained 886 exiting beneficiaries of the Nigeria COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus, NG-CARES, in literacy and vocational skills.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that NG-CARES programme is a 750 million dollars state driven initiative supported by the World Bank.
The programme seeks for the elevation of businesses affected by COVID-19 pandemic, expand access to livelihood support and food security services as well as grants for poor and vulnerable households.
The General Manager of the agency, Alhaji Garba Muhammad said the beneficiaries were employed under the NG-CARES Delivery Platform Results Area 1: Labour Intensive Public Workfare (LIPW) for vàrious workfare in their respective communities.
He said that each of the exiting beneficiaries received 15,000 as monthly stipend during their one year temporary employment period.
“We organised this training for the beneficiaries of the LIPW project to encourage them to embrace small scale businesses even after their exit from the project.
“This training will impact the participants on various knowledge in the areas of savings, skills acquisition, entrepreneurship and micro enterprise development, among others,” he said.
Mukhtar Ibrahim, Coordinator, State Cares Coordinating Unit (SCCU), congratulated the beneficiaries for completing the one year LIPW programme.
He said the LIPW was introduced under the NG-CARES programme to create business and employment opportunities to households.
“I believe this project has already impacted in your lives, I hope you have saved from your earnings for a year period.
“I urge you to listen to all the papers and presentations to be presented under this training,” he said.
Also, the Manager, Basic Services of the Agency, Alhaji Sani Buhari in a paper, titled: “Vocational Literacy, Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship”, urged the participants to utilise the business opportunities and knowledge gained from the project.
“You shouldn’t under rate your business opportunities, you should be patient and perseverance while developing your business platforms”.
Earlier, the LIPW Manager, Umar Nakwada said the agency enrolled unemployed and unskilled youth and women to work in different types of labour activities selected by their communities.
Mr Nakwada said the training aimed to enhance their skills to enable them to have better understanding of employment.
“This training also targeted at equipping the participants with appropriate tools for the formation of cooperatives as well as prepare them towards an exit of the project,” he said.
