Youth for Business Project is a six months to one-year intensive entrepreneurship development programme for young people between the ages of 18 – 40 years who are interested in starting their own businesses. It involves the provision of capacity building and provision of business support. It is intended to enhance the capacity of the youths who are running small businesses or have the intention to own and run sustainable enterprises. Participants also undergo apprenticeship programme as part of the activities. We believe that if the youths are gainfully employed, the problems of kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution, human trafficking, cultism and political thuggery are minimally reduced. Our youth for business initiative combines Entrepreneurship skill building with Apprenticeship.
With glaring economic hardship, young people have become very restive and extremely violent in conduct at the slightest provocation. As youth unemployment continue to rise, kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism and terrorism are entrenching themselves in the lives of restless youths who become both perpetrators and victims – as the case in Niger Delta communities where cultism has and still claiming the lives of hundreds of youths, displaced women and children.
The consequence of unemployment and poverty is youth involvement in hard drug abuse, crime, cultism – killing and maiming and other criminal activities which has become the order of the day among youths, especially in rural communities. Peer pressure escalates and increases the recruitment circle into criminal gangs – the teeming unemployed and unengaged youths are targets and most vulnerable.