The National Centre for Women Development (NCWD), on Wednesday started a-two-week training for no fewer than 115 young girls and women on various trades and skills acquisition.
Dr Asabe Bashir, the Director-General, NCWD, said the programme, which is the seventh edition of the 2022 Residential Capacity Programme for female artisans, would expose the selected women through rigorous artisanship.
According to her, the skill trades, which have hitherto been preserved for males and are gender-biased, will empower the young women and girls economically as well as enhance national development.
“The centre vigorously pursues programmes aimed at upholding and promoting high intellectual practice in the area of women and gender development.
“As such, these programmes are based on the recognition that women’s economic empowerment is the first step to freedom.
“In this regard, the programmes are structured to give the beneficiary a voice and confidence to cope in an environment where competition is the order of the day and innovation is needed to stay afloat.
“By this, the NCWD is contributing to raise a viable and skilled workforce to meet the challenges of unemployment in the country,” she said.
Bashir said that since 2016, the centre had trained no fewer than 1,000 young females, thereby making the skills gender responsive, inclusive and empowered them economically.
She said that NCWD was also committed to achieving the goal of job creation and wealth generation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.
On her part, the Chairperson, Association of Professional Women Builders in Nigeria (APWBN), Mrs Florence Akinyoade, urged the participants to develop a passion for the skill trades they would learn.
She said that the training would be of benefit to them and their livelihoods would improve, enabling them to be employers of labour in their various communities.
The high point of the event was the distribution of sanitary pads to the trainees, and the decoration of the trainees with “I am a woman” emblem.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the participants will be trained on plumbing, refrigerator and air conditioner repair, generator repair, POP installation, tiling and masonry, piping, electrical works and installation.
The training was done in collaboration with the Association of Professional Women Builders in Nigeria (APWBN) with the support of Procter and Gamble (P&G) and the development Research and Projects Centre (dPRC).