ACT Foundation partners organisations on entrepreneurship, skill acquisition programme

Aspire Coronation Trust (ACT) Foundation, a non-profit organization in Nigeria, through the support of Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) America and Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund has concluded its philanthropic program focused on entrepreneurship and digital skill development.

The program was actualized through the Youth Entrepreneurship Skills (YES) Grant initiative.

This enabled the three implementing organizations (Aspilos Foundation, the Assembly Hub and Ashake Foundation) to focus on addressing the national challenge of unemployment, which was further escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic, and equipping women and young people with the necessary entrepreneurial, digital and technological skills to improve their economic independence.

Osayi Allile, CEO – ACT Foundation, shared details on the impact the program was able to achieve.

“Over 1,000 beneficiaries were successfully trained on vocational, technical and digital skills such as leather works, tailoring, photography, web development, graphics design, data science, among others.

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“The COVID-19 pandemic escalated Nigeria’s already high unemployment rate and young Nigerians bore the brunt of this impact. Global studies and successful programs have shown entrepreneurship and digital/tech skills as the quickest way to address these challenges, hence why we chose this method to actualize the program,” she said.

Several participants also shared their experiences and spoke about how the skills they obtained and developed during the program helped them generate income.

Daodu Aisha, a student and trainee from Abocoders Abeokuta, said “I developed skills in HTML, CSS and JavaScript from my digital literacy and frontend development classes. This helped me get a remote internship opportunity with dHUB Innovations”.

Another participant, Maryam Ajisebutu said, “I enrolled in the printmaking craft training in Lagos with no previous experience. But after the program, I was able to produce exceptional tie and dye fabrics and secure a job to collaborate with a furniture company in producing the fabric used to finish their furniture pieces”.

Asides this, African non-profits were trained to conduct their project implementation in a safer and healthier manner throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. A total of 129 non-profits from 10 different countries benefited from this training, through the implementing organization – DRASA Health Trust.

Ifeoma Okeke-Korieocha

Ifeoma Okeke-Korieocha is the Aviation Correspondent at BusinessDay Media Limited, publishers of BusinessDay Newspapers. She is also the Deputy Editor, BusinessDay Weekender Magazine, the Saturday Weekend edition of BusinessDay. She holds a BSC in Mass Communication from the prestigious University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a Masters degree in Marketing at the University of Lagos. As the lead writer on the aviation desk, Ifeoma is responsible and in charge of the three weekly aviation and travel pages in BusinessDay and BDSunday. She also overseas and edits all pages of BusinessDay Saturday Weekender. She has written various investigative, features and news stories in aviation and business related issues and has been severally nominated for award in the category of Aviation Writer of the Year by the Nigeria Media Nite-Out awards; one of the Nigeria’s most prestigious media awards ceremonies. Ifeoma is a one-time winner of the prestigious Nigeria Media Merit Award under the 'Aviation Writer of the Year' Category. She is the 2025 Eloy Award winner under the Print Media Journalist category. She has undergone several journalism trainings by various prestigious organisations. Ifeoma is also a fellow of the Female Reporters Leadership Fellowship of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.