The women of the Umuode community in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State on Saturday concluded their 2024 Annual August Meeting with the commissioning of a skills acquisition centre for the empowerment of both men and women in the community, including non-indigenes.

The August Meeting Is an annual general meeting of Igbo women by birth or marriage in their various communities, held in August each year to discuss issues, development projects, and to chart the way forward for themselves, their families, and their communities.

“Today is a red-letter day in our community”, declared Mrs. Agatha Nnaji, the executive director and founder of the Dewdrop Foundation which co-sponsored the construction of the Skills Acquisition Centre building for the community and has recently equipped it for their community empowerment programme after several years of being unutilized.

According to Engr. Francis Okoh, the technology courses being offered at the skills acquisition Centre “are comprehensive and state-of-the-art. They include software development, UI/UX design, animation, game development, data science, generative artificial intelligence, and machine learning”.

While speaking at the official opening and handover of the Centre’s operation and management to Dewdrop Foundation, Mrs Nnaji declared that “the youth in Umuode and neighboring communities can now have easy access to fundamental training in Information Technology, Catering and Hospitality Services, Events Management, Caregiving, and Fashion Design which are being promoted by the Dewdrop Foundation through its TVET sister organization, Dewdrop Institute.

She continued: “Inclusive development is at the heart of our vision.

“We recognize that people in rural communities do not typically have the financial ability to pay the full fees for our courses, therefore in line with our goal to ensure that “no community is left behind in empowerment programs”, Dewdrop Foundation will provide a 50% discount on the course fee of N40,000 for the community’s participants in the Basic ICT course, in partnership with Techxagon Academy”.

Dewdrop Institute’s globally recognized certifications are accredited by the City and Guilds International of the UK, the Skills Development Council of Canada, and the National Council on Technical Education (NBTE) of Nigeria.

Mrs Nnaji, who had served as a Director of Marketing at Sheraton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, before joining Geometric Power as the current Group Managing Director and also holds an MBA from George Washington University in the United States in Tourism and Hotel Management, also stated that Dewdrop Institute is the official training partner of BON Hotels International of South Africa which has a portfolio of over 40 hotels in Nigeria and the West African region.

A beneficiary of Dewdrop Foundation’s Youth Empowerment Summer Programme in the Umuode community, Mrs Ujunwa Ugwu, spoke enthusiastically about the positive impact the Foundation’s interventions have made in the community.

She shared her experience while an undergraduate at Ebonyi State University where the training she got in catering from the Dewdrop Institute enabled her to generate a reasonable income for her school fees through her sale of confectionaries to other students and the university campus community.

Though participants in the Institute’s City & Guilds UK certified Caregiving programmes are trained to work in Nigeria, many have departed to Europe and Canada because of the better prospects. The President General of the Umuode Community, The Hon. Emma Owube, however, in his official handover speech at the Centre to Dewdrop Foundation, stated that that the “brain drain trend can be easily turned into “brain gain, as we have already started witnessing in Nigeria, like the situations in India and China”.

“Nigerians abroad remit between $20m and $25m annually to their country, which is about the same amount we generate from oil and gas annually.

“Many Nigerian homes are sustained by their members working abroad, and many of these highly accomplished persons eventually return home to work as highly skilled doctors, engineers, data scientists, academics, healthcare professionals, etc., thereby helping their communities and the economy through technology transfer”.

The Umuode traditional ruler, Igwe Moses Idenyi, is full of praise for Mrs. Nnaji and her colleagues at the Dewdrop Foundation for their vision and compassion for the rural people and the implementation of Dewdrop’s hands-on TVET practical education.

“If only our tertiary institutions could provide more practical training for our students as the Dewdrop Institute does”, the monarch argues, “our unemployment crisis in Nigeria would not have been so severe”.

The Chairman of Geometric Power, Professor Bart Nnaji, who is a globally recognised engineering researcher, agrees with Igwe Idenyi, adding that the world is moving towards not just technical and vocational education, but also promoting what is known in academic circles as action research “where theory informs practice and practice, in turn, informs theory.

“Action research is well known in engineering, technology management, the social sciences, and management research.

“Nigerian institutions need to embrace action research to enable our youth to have a better appreciation of what they learn in the classroom, become more creative and innovative, as well as become successful entrepreneurs.

“I have gone through the Dewdrop Institute’s curriculum, and I am satisfied that Nigeria is in need of its programmes and courses”.

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