NGO to train over 300 youths in Enugu on business management

Pan-Africa Youths Entrepreneur Development (PAYED), an NGO, plans to train more than 300 youths on innovative business management and customer service to build a competent business capacity in the state.

The Project Coordinator of the PAYED, Mrs Chinwe Ogborji, made this known on Sunday during the official flag-off of the four-month training in Enugu.

Ogborji said that the training would allow youths, who were between 18 and 35 years to be acquainted with modern business strategies and also to develop capacity to improve on their businesses.

She said the organisation would connect the beneficiaries to financial institutions to start up their business and help them secure access to single-digit interest loans to enable them contribute to the nation’s economy.

“PAYED provides support through Citi Foundation and funded by Technoserver for enterprising people to build competitive business and employ more people in their businesses.

“We are trying to get more youths to be financially literate, to rely more on themselves and be able to contribute their own quota to economic development of the country.

“At the end of the training, we will connect the beneficiaries to financial institutions to start up their business, get them access to the market and also partner with other internship organisations to help establish them,’’ Ogborji said.

She noted that the organisation had trained and empowered about 280 youths in its first phase of the youth empowerment programme, saying that “the programme is holding simultaneously in Abuja’’.

The Citi Foundation takes a philanthropic approach to funding and leverages on the enormous expertise of Citi and its people to fulfil missions and drive leadership and innovation as well.

The financial literacy and business training session is an example of how Citi Foundation engages its employees as volunteers to deliver training in basic accounting and other business innovations education.

In 2018, Citi Foundation assisted in funding six programmes meant to support Nigerian youths in developing leadership skills and entrepreneurial mind-sets required to launch micro-retail start-ups.