From Gyang Bere, Jos
Following the effort to reduce high rate of unemployment ravaging Nigeria occasion by insecurity, a non governmental organization under the aegis of TEKAN Peace Desk have graduated 19 trainees on various skills acquisition programmes.
The 19 graduands cutting across different religious beliefs were trained on catering, make-up artist, cosmetology, barbing salon and decoration.
The Coordinator of TEKAN Peace Desk, Mrs Helen P. Haggai, disclosed this during the graduation ceremony in Jos and said what prompted them to keyed into the initiative was as a result of the decades of violence that erupted Plateau.
She said: “Plateau State has been into crisis for the past 20 years, and there are a lot 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. You know people will just see things and just go back.
“So we brought this approach, bringing the indigenes together the women and then young people, bringing them from the two divide(Christians and Muslims) together to build their trust on each other and because they are poor anf gave them the means of livelihood.”
She also revealed that in no distanced time, TEKAN Peace will meet with Plateau State Microfinance Development Agency,PLASMIDA and Plateau Peace Building Agency,PPBA, to strategize for better partnership so their impact may well be feel more than the present.
“We have challenges in terms of finance, you see we could have done more than 19 people but if we have more funds we will go more bigger. We will get more young people to take them out of the street and empowered them to be self reliant.”
She charged the graduands to take advantage of the skills acquired and be the employers of labour as they were been given start up packs.
