These investments in IT are said to have the ability to ensure that the youths are constructively engaged.

This advice came from IT training company, NIIT Fortesoft Systems, when some youths recently graduated from its “Streets2click” programme sponsored by JMG Limited and Jamara Nigeria.

Some youths trained in graphics and hardware design graduated from the programme.

The maiden edition of the training, which ran for six weeks, was aimed at empowering young, educationally disadvantaged Nigerian youths in order to put them in a better position for employment and self-empowerment purposes.

The Managing Director at the Surulere Branch Office of NIIT, Adedokun Oduyemi, represented by Mrs. B. Joseph, in his speech, explained that the training was about taking people, who are brilliant but just don’t have opportunities to develop their talents and excel in their chosen career, and creating access for them.

“It is a great milestone for the company and I will encourage the participants to utilise the skills they are being impacted with. We are an IT training company and during the COVID-19 Pandemic, we saw the need to give back to the society and take IT to the streets to make an impact.

“The idea of ‘Streets2click’ is to empower youths for IT excellence and ensure that by the end of the year 2021, we are able to deposit into our economy a minimum of 2000 youths. The vision of the initiative is to transform the ordinary person on the street to become an IT skilled person,” Oduyemi said.

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Co-ordinator at JMG Limited, Vera Umanah, said that they partnered with NIIT to sponsor the participants because they realised a lot of people do not have opportunity to express themselves and gain skills.

“We came on board to help people learn new skills. We weren’t expecting it to be this big but I’m really impressed. “I think this is a very good initiative for the Government to take advantage of, if the youth can channel this energy into something that will bring a positive change, it will be a very big opportunity if the government can take over,” Umanah said.

The Project Manager, Streets2click, Naomi job, revealed that they had to go to the streets and slums to get the right beneficiaries.