PIND, Beyond Regular hosts one-day career mentorship event for young professionals in Port Harcourt

The Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) in collaboration with Beyond Regular and MTN organized a one-day breakfast mentorship and networking event for young people in the Niger Delta in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on Saturday, 28th May 2022. The event featured 320young professionals who had the chance to ask several questions to 40 mentors on career and personal growth.

PIND’s executive director Tunji Idowu, who was one of the mentors, gave a keynote address to the youth titled ‘Note to My Younger Professional’ in which he gave salient advice on how to approach building and sustaining a career.

“Give yourself the permission not to have everything figured out”, he told the young people, when advising them on steps to mapping out their career path.

He also asked them to use impact rather than success as a measure of achievement. “To use success over value or impact as a measure of how much you have achieved is to short change yourself”, he said. “Intangible assets like impact on others – family, workplace and society– are more enduring than tangible and fleeting assets like money or cars”.

Mr. Idowu also asked the youth to track their progress at every point, never stop learning or developing themselves and to always stay current on things happening in effects on their career.

PIND’s Advocacy Manager, Chuks Ofulue and the Youth Employment Pathways (YEP) Manager; Patrick Ekpe, also spoke to the attendees. Mr. Ofulue showed the young professionals various ways they could leverage PIND’s online job and opportunities hub, Niger Delta Link (NDLink), to advance their careers. While Mr. Ekpe enlightened the gathering on the impact of PIND’s YEP program in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Delta. He also solicited the support of the private sector in scaling up the project to others states in the region.

The Niger Delta has witnessed high levels of conflict and youth restiveness and as such, the region records some of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. PIND understands the connection between a lack of economic opportunities and violence. In 2017, PIND received a pilot grant from Ford Foundation to initiate the Niger Delta Youth Employment Pathways (NDYEP) project; the pilot initiative of PIND’s YEP program, to actively target youth in three states in the region, namely Abia, Akwa Ibom, and Rivers States, and addressed identified systemic constraints through evidence-driven and demand-led approach. NDYEP worked to strengthen coordination and learning among key actors in the employment ecosystem to ensure the development of an enabling environment for focused skills development that would reduce unemployment.

Between 2018 and 2021, 4,355 youths were trained and equipped with in-demand vocational skills in four growing sectors (ICT, building construction, agriculture and finished leather). 2,033 of the successful participants were linked to immediate waged employment or supported to commence innovative enterprises of their own. PIND has also organizedvocational skills training to address youth unemployment challenges in Delta State through the Delta Youth Employment pathways (DYEP) program. 631 youths graduated from theDYEP program in March 2022 with 161 of them linked to immediate waged employment while 273 have started small-scale businesses. PIND recently launched the scale-up phase ofthe NDYEP project, and awarded grants to 11 implementing partners to train additional 1,000 youth participants in various technical vocational skills for at least 6 months, starting in May 2022.