Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) is collaborating with a non-governmental organisation, the Funky Four Foundation (FFF), to sensitise undergraduates in universities in the nine states in Niger Delta region, on development of their talents.
The foundation’s director of operations, Dr Michael Adagogo Ogolo, said the advocacy programme, was in to enable youths to be self-reliant during schooling and after graduation from tertiary institutions.
Ogolo said the initiative, christened, “Change The Tide”, was also aimed at encouraging students to identify, develop their individual talents and be skilful while still in academic pursuits.
He stated that being self-reliant would help the students, upon graduation, to be able to employ others, instead of going about searching for white collar jobs, which might not be easy to come by, due to the high rate of unemployment from the hard economy of the nation.
The operations director said, “The idea of Change The Tide Initiative of the Funky Four Foundation in conjunction with NDDC, as the sponsor, is to encourage undergraduates in the universities not to look down on their talents, as most of them are highly talented, in terms of music, acting, comedy and the creative economy.
„Creative economy means, going about, using what God has given to you as a talent to fend for yourself and equally employing others, we use ourselves, the funky four as examples.
„To those of us whose parents were not able to sponsor our education, we used our talents in music, drama, comedy and other skills to train ourselves, pay rents, even assisted our parents with some financial needs and employed one or two persons that followed us to run around, thereby creating employment, which they in turn emulated by employing others as well.
„Today, with our skills, we have become big in various fields; as comedians, as actors, as musicians and many more. You see that in mastering a skill while still in the university, you create job for yourself and become an entrepreneur in creating jobs for others.
“We keep telling people that there are no jobs, and that is the reason you should develop your talent to becoming a skill so that you can grow yourself to become big by being self-employed.
„Those talented in skills already have jobs. All they need to do is, develop, nurture them to build houses, create jobs for the Niger Delta region, get married, build families and live normal lives,“ he said.
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