Skilled-Hands ICT Foundation

Skilled-Hands ICT Foundation is committed to solving the problems of unemployment and lack of viable entrepreneurial opportunities as a means of curbing marginalisation, thereby ensuring human capital development.

Our best solution in this regard, is Resensitization of the youths on the importance of apprenticeship and skill acquisition; use of practical approach in training and retraining the youths on their areas of interest. Using our financial support system, we ensure the outstanding trainees would receive maximum mentoring and strategic advice for proper establishment in their respective areas of skills. Afterwards, they would be integrated into our network as partners.

Using our skill development services and entrepreneurial training as a leverage, there would be positive changes through the training and supports (finances and mentorship) thereby reaching out to billions of unemployed youths with our network. By doing so, it would reduce the rate of social vices - criminality, alcoholism, get-rich syndrome, etc.

Unemployment and poor entrepreneurial opportunities have remained the major constraint to the growth and human capital development in Africa. About 12 million fresh graduates are turned up yearly with few job opportunities of 3 million. For instance, in Nigeria, there are about 600,000 graduates every year with 10 - 15,000 job opportunities. But the question remains why are there more graduates than jobs? Here are the two problems: overemphasis on theory rather than on practicals in educational system. Because of this, graduates hardly find their passions in specific areas, making them not to see challenges that would create opportunities. Another big problem is technological dynamism and its rapidity in human labour. One effect of this is that the graduates hardly fit into the kind of opportunities available, this because, they do not have the skills, making employers lack skilled hands that will work and create other opportunities

Skilled-hands ICT Foundation is an Online/offline apprenticeship platform that helps undergraduates, graduates and the non-educated to have practical knowledge on different fields of study and also build partnership network with them. We also have partnership with companies, industries and firms where we send these people to have working experience of their choice. In order to carry out uneducated ones, we make use of local languages. These are our main focus:

1) Resensitization of youths on the importance of apprenticeship and entrepreneurial skills on their passion, and how they can find their passion by streaming down their field of studies.

2) we train our educators , especially those using local languages as a medium for teaching.

3) As a viable room for support services and mentoring programmes, we give financial support to those that are able to stand out in creating opportunities for our network.

We have four(4) groups as our main target population: the undergraduates who hardly practical in their classes because of lack of materials, graduates who never  or had shabby experience in practicals all through their stay in school, non-educated; these people never had the opportunity of going to school because of one or two reasons but still have the desire to acquire knowledge and those who have all it takes to start up a business or project but do not have what it takes.

This work is written based on personal experience, which is first , as a victim of the circumstance and other one on one interviews from fresh graduates like I am. And our solutions are based on personal challenges we experienced.

To a large extent, it will enable the users understand and appreciate apprenticeship/skills,  entrepreneurial developments, trends and changes that have taken place or will take place in all fields of study and in technology.

Marginalization in technology, is one the things that have caused unemployment , denial to creating jobs and lack entrepreneurial opportunities in Africa. Most graduates had little or no experience of what they had studied in school, because of this, they do not have skills and are not employeable. Again, they do not position themselves for creating job because they do not understand opportunities embedded in it. Best solutions to these are Resensitization of you on the importance of having skills, streaming down their field of study to a particular area in order to acquire those skills and financial support.

what makes Skilled-Hands ICT Foundation innovative are: 1)the use of online classes  and practical approaches

 ( 2) partnership with schools for training, and companies and/or industries  for advanced training and recruitment.

3) And the incorporation of non-educated for training  via local languages. 

Our theory of change is to lift the ban of unemployment and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities, which has come as a result of overuse of theory over practicals in most Africa educational system, using an online/ offline means, we can reach out to many in this category. We used Nigeria as a case study, and the data from interviews with (NYSC) National Youths Service Corps as our target population for impact evaluation. Our main focus is to expose the youths to practical opportunities that enable get access to skills and creating opportunities for themselves.

There are three main barriers we will face: 1)finance, how to get of grants and strong shareholders investors. 2) technical teachers/ tuitors that will use local languages for the practical, especially for the uneducated. 3) market, how we can easily get to our target population and convince them to use our services.

Our plans to overcome these challenges: 1) applying  for international grants and equity. 2) Making use of transliteration and videos as tool for training the non-educated. 3) for marketing, using media as tool for adverts.

This solution is a product of personal experience, and as a victim of these  challenges of not having partical experience of what was taught in schools, we lack skills that will enable us fit into opportunities available for us, this is because, technology changes and there are need for us to change along the technology, so that we can fit into jobs and create other opportunities for ourselves.

We provide services through our online / offline practical training on professional courses, it is the major challenge for both undergraduates and graduates ( unemployers) in Africans educational system, which is overuse of theory over practicals. In order to lift the ban of marginalization on the aspects of not fitting into the kind of jobs available for this age, there is need  to give the youths reteaching on practicals that will expose them to the businesses that are embedded in their different fields of study , as it will make them access and good jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves.

Skilled-Hands ICT Foundation uses the combination of sustained donations and grants, selling of services and raising investment capital for financial path sustainability when it comes to solving the problems of unemployment and lack of entrepreneurial opportunities . We will apply for grants through local and international support organisations, as we will give them feedbacks on how we have gone.

In the case of selling our services, we will generate money through our online /offline classes, through our partnership with schools etc. Using our financial support system as a tool, there will be creation of companies and industries that will further generate revenues.

Skilled-Hands ICT Foundation has incorporated an online/ offline practical training for the non-educated/ adults, using local languages as a medium for the training. With this, we can reach out to adults who have passion for specific professional courses. And it will expose them to entrepreneurial skills.

We will use artificial intelligence and mechine languages that understand or make use of local languages as a tool for teaching. With this, we can reach out to millions of uneducated youths that do not want to use education as a barrier in creating opportunities for themselves.

With our solutions, we can reach unemploye youths who are unable find job or create opportunities themselves.