LAGOS COMMISSIONER URGES YOUTHS TO EMBRACE VOLUNTEERING JOB FOR SELF DEVELOPMENT
Lagos State Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Mr. Babtunde Durosinmi-Etti has advised youths seeking job opportunities to embrace available volunteering jobs within their areas of interest as a leverage that would make their dreamed jobs realizable.
Speaking at an Employability Skills Training programme organised for unemployed youths in Apapa and its environs, the Commissioner said that young and aspiring entrepreneurs should desist from laying emphasis on monetary inducement, adding that such could ruin their plan of achieving future goal.
Durosinmi-Etti maintained that youths who have gained experience from volunteering jobs stand better chance of being gainfully employed because they would have gathered practical skills needed to secure and sustain their jobs when finally employed.
“Like what obtains in developed countries where volunteering jobs are seen as an avenue for building employability skills, youths who are unemployed in this part of the world should also learn to maximize opportunities around them rather than searching for scarce paid employment”, he reiterated.
Speaking on the need to take the several training programmes by the Ministry seriously, the Commissioner said that the track records and antecedents of the State already provide a ‘marketable’ platform for the beneficiaries of its training and empowerment programmes which would eventually grant them leverage for job opportunities because of its global recognition.
He said that the training programme equips participants with skills which they are not exposed to while in school, stressing that “We train these young entrepreneurs on time management, team building, entrepreneurship and how to broaden their overall competence beyond what they were taught in the university.”
The Commissioner also disclosed that the state government is planning to begin graduate internship programme for 2,000 graduates between the ages of 21 and 30 in May this year, adding that the state government decided to initiate the programme as a way of curbing the restiveness and vulnerability to crime and immoral habit of the age group.