Mastercard Foundation Nigeria has said that it is targeting 10 million Nigerians between the ages of 15 and 35 that will be engaged with decent jobs by the year 2030, under the Young Africa Works Strategy.
The foundation also said that it had trained 11 Young Impact Associates in the last year to have greater skills and more knowledge in monitoring and evaluation.
Speaking at a four-day Boot Camp event to mark the end of the one-year program in Abuja on Tuesday, the Project Director for Impact Partner Organisation for the Young Africa Works Strategy, funded by Mastercard Foundation Nigeria, Nkem Ene, noted that the idea of the training is not for people outside the YIAs age bracket not to look at them condescendingly but they will be the ones to decide what should be monitored for their age group and how it should be monitored.
Nkem noted, “They have a strategy to ensure that 30 million young people between the ages of 15 to 35 years are engaged in meaningful work that has dignity, pays decent wages, work that they are proud to do by the year 2030 and 10 million of such young people will come from Nigeria. So the Young Africa Works Project is intending in later years to have the same young people that they are looking to serve to be the ones evaluating their progress.
“The 11 Young Impact Associates who have been trained in the last year to have greater skills and more knowledge in monitoring and evaluation can be the ones shaping the monitoring and evaluation space in Nigeria and not have people who are outside their age bracket not condescendingly looking at them but they will be the ones to decide what should be monitored for their age group and how should be monitored.”
As the first and maiden cohort, she maintained that there was a lot of experimentation with the YIAs, which had a mixture of in-person classes, online classes, including various ways of engagements, and blogs that will encourage them to write so that they can strengthen their writing skills, which will encourage them to work on the job.
“Many of them were posted to organizations where they could be part of an actual workforce, contributing to the M&E aspect of what that organization does and the idea was to take what they have learned theoretically, have that roll out in a practical way and every time they finish there will a mentoring session where they will encourage to speak about their experiences in rolling out what they learned in class and whatever would constitute like a concern of theirs or a complaint to that will be addressed during that mentoring session,” she added.
Punch