From Gyang Bere, Jos
A conglomeration of churches in Nigeria under the umbrella of TEKAN Peace Desk has identified and empowered widows who suffered violent attacks with requisite skills for economic sustainability.
The widows and vulnerable women selected across North states were trained on catering, make-up artist, cosmetology, barbing salon, decoration among others.
The Coordinator, TEKAN Peace Desk, Mrs Helen P. Haggai said the intervention was to reduce the high rate of unemployment among vulnerable women in the North who lost their husbands and sources of livelihood.
“Plateau State and most parts of the north has been into crisis for the past 20 years, and there are alot of talks and dialogue within those at the helm of the affairs either as religious leaders or political leaders.
“But what we again see is that people speaks with their two sides of the mouth. People will just see things and go back without intervention.
“We brought this approach, bringing the indigenes together the women and then young people, from the two divide,Christians and Muslims, to build their trust on each other and because they are people who have lost their sources of livelihood, we decided to train and empower them with skills.”
Mrs. Haggai noted that the TEKAN Peace Desk has put in motion plan to meet with Plateau State Microfinance Development Agency, (PLASMIDA) and Plateau Peace Building Agency, (PPBA), to come up with better initiatives in the interest of vulnerable women.
“We have challenges in terms of finance, you see we could have train more than the number have people we have trained but if we have more funds we will get more young people out of the street and empowered them to be economically self-reliant.”
She charged the graduands to take make the most use of the skills acquired and the start-up pack received to become and employer of labour.
Mrs. Haggai noted that the TEKAN Peace Desk has a monitoring and evaluation mechanism to checkmate the beneficiaries on how effective they are putting puting into use the skills acquired.