Centre for Social Awareness, Advocacy and Ethics’ (CSAAE) mission is to facilitate development and contribute towards reducing poverty in Nigeria. This aligns with the first Sustainable Development Goal(SDG) – No Poverty. However, the most important question that has ever occupied the minds of social engineers of these SDGs, including CSAAE, is curved around how these goals can be achieved in the near future.
This concern usurps the question: how can the Centre fast-track this mission? More people, especially, indigent citizens need more sustainable empowerments; women and youths should, however, be the center of these empowerments because, according to recent research, they are the worst hit by the dwindling Nigerian economy. A report of the 2017 Labour Force Statistics released by Nigerian Bureau of Statistics showed that 42.9% of women, within the ages of 16-64, are either unemployed or underemployed, compared to 37%.
To advance this course, CSAAE launched the Career Building and Entrepreneurships Program (CBEP) to help move Nigerians, especially youths and young mothers out of poverty by equipping them with career and entrepreneurship skills to launch enterprises based on market demand.
With the burning passion to achieve these, there are already two innovative Projects running under the Centre’s Career Building and Entrepreneurship Program: while the Young Mompreneurs Initiative (YIMI) is a women economic empowerment program, designed to provide expertise enterprise development training and support that allow young mothers, who are breadwinners in their families, to initiate and grow business enterprises, to sustain their families and create opportunities that help others sustain themselves; the Centre’s C-Enterprise Program is the homebuilder of over 30 Social and Business Enterprises (SBEs) initiated and managed by Emerging Nigerian Leaders (ENLs) at the Centre.
All these efforts committed by CSAAE would rather be regarded as the magnet that drew PIND-MADE mentors to the Centre’s Enterprise Development Unit for Market for the Poor (M4P) system and Project Proposal Development. The M4P training is aimed at improving and sustaining market systems, and it provides guidance for understanding the poor in market systems (analysis) and how to bring about change (action).
Partnership Initiative for Niger Delta (PIND) is a project of CHEVRON, established to make markets work for the poor rural enterprising women, and to promote peace in the area. Market Development in the Niger Delta (MADE) is a project of the Department for International Development (DFID).
CSAAE was among the few organizations selected by PIND-MADE for mentoring and capacity building. The training was held at the Centre’s Head office in Owerri, Imo State, from the 20th to 21st of November, 2019 where 5 team members of the enterprise development unit were trained.
This recent development is a good step for CSAAE as it scales up its Enterprise Development Unit (C-Enterprise) to help more youths and young women initiate and grow businesses in areas of market demand.
SHEDRACK ANUCHIRIM, Enl.
Coordinator, Young Mompreneurs Initiative (YIMI)
