1,000 Northern Youths To Be Empowered By Elumelu Foundation

Tony Elumelu Foundation is set to support young people at Internally Displaced Persons Camp with entrepreneurial skills with start off capital so as to reduce poverty and security challenges.

The foundation in partnership with United Nations Development Program will also empower 1,000 youths from northern part of Nigeria and the Sahel region for the youths to be gainfully engaged in the next two months.

“These new 1,000 entrepreneurs that will be selected in August is mainly for youths from northern extraction.

“The initiative is to produce direct job opportunity and Business Empire among young talented youths in the North.

He said the motives behind the empowerment is to help reduce poverty

Founder of Tony Elumelu Foundation, Mr. Tony Elumelu, stated this in Kano on Saturday after been honoured with Doctor of Business Administration, Honoris Causa by Bayero University Kano at its 35^th Convocation.

He explained that the new empowerment opportunity strictly reserved for young business-minded northerners will run for 12 weeks after which successful beneficiaries will receive $5,000 each free of charge to build their business empires

He said the foundation established in 2010 endowed  with  $100 million  has supported over 7000 young entrepreneurs for them to achieve their dreams.

He noted that the vision for the Foundation is to unlock the obstacles that Africa’s entrepreneurs face as they grow their start-ups into small to medium enterprises (SMEs), their SMEs into national growth companies, and their national growth companies into African multinationals.

 “The criteria to become a beneficiary of the foundation is the ideas of a person to be articulated. I am a son of a poor man with a poor background, hence it is my joy to support the aspiration of any young person to move out of poverty bracket,’’ said Elumelu.

According to him, ‘’It is not how much you have in your bank accounts that matters or the kind of luxury you enjoy with your family, but rather how you are able to support others to feed, get shelter and send their children to school also.’’

He added that the foundation is not restricting its support to Nigeria alone but to all African countries.

The philanthropist noted that the foundation will continue to support its growing numbers of program alumni, whose inspirational success stories serve as an encouragement to upcoming entrepreneurs and demonstrate the effectiveness of the interventions.