Kano
The Peace Initiative Network in partnership with the Peace Direct has launched an empowerment programme to provide skills for 250 youths and women in conflict areas of northern Nigeria.
Participants in the programme supported by the United kingdom-based organisation, who were drawn from Kano and Jos, would receive training and inputs required to start sustainable micro- business in tailoring, shoe and bag making, phone repairs, hair salon, vulcanizing, and grinding machines.
At the end of the training programme, beneficiaries are to be given business tools and materials to enable them start businesses of their own.
Flagging off the programme in the commercial city of Kano, project coordinator of PIN, Dr. Michael Femi Sodipo, disclosed that the project was conceived as an intervention to specifically tackle the negative social side effects of mounting conflict in northern parts of the country.
Sodipo said that the core objective of the programme was to strengthencommunity resilience to violence and recruitment to extremist groups through income generating and peace building activities.
According to him, 140 young people would be empowered to reject violence and resolve their conflicts, while the remaining 110 women would be empowered to assist them to increase their income and have sustainable livelihood.
Similarly, he added that the programme would also help sharpen the skills of the young people to participate in development activities in their communities, which would consequently, strengthened the communities to resist conflict.
