In commemoration of the International Youth Day, Project Enable Africa, launches her Business Support Program targeted at supporting Persons With Disabilities who are entrepreneurs to run and scale their businesses.
Project Enable Africa, the foremost NGO dedicated to the digital and social empowerment of Persons With Disabilities launched a programme called Business Support Program for Persons With Disabilities to provide training, mentorship and create opportunities to scale businesses.
The Business Support Training is the first of its kind, in terms of providing business mentorship, digital strategy, access to market, funding linkage, legal counsel and financial management training to businesses led by Persons with Disabilities across the nation.
In a statement released by the Project Director, Ms Dolapo Agbede, she said, “we are launching this programme in commemoration of the International Youth Day observed today, 12th of August across the world.
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“We understand from our Digital Fellowship training that young people with disabilities are making efforts to run businesses and make a decent living; unfortunately, most business support programs are not inclusive for persons with disabilities to participate.
“Entrepreneurial empowerment such as this helps to increase productivity, hence encouraging PWDs to be economically independent; therefore, they can make tangible contributions to the GDP of our economy.
“However, the data collection processes from our Digital Fellowship training which has successfully trained over 300 persons with disabilities, has shown that many PWD led businesses do lack access to information, mentorship and that is why we came up with this programme.”
According to Ms Agbede, only persons with disabilities who own existing businesses and have access to a digitally enabled device can partake from the online exercise, which comes at no cost to participants.
“Some of our other programs designed to support young people across the country include the Project Enable Fellowship Program, which equips PWDs with ICT Skills and opportunities for internship. We also have the Caregivers Digital Marketing training for mums with special needs kids to access digital training and tools to enhance their businesses.
Furthermore, she reiterated that “we have received email enquiries for the next Project Enable Fellowship Programme, and we are glad to use this opportunity to say that the second batch for the year will resume in September. We had to hold back on physical training due to the COVID 19 pandemic.
“However, during the lockdown, we launched an online digital marketing training for mums with kids with special needs and caregivers of Persons With Disabilities. We anticipate that with these three empowerment programs, we will be able to reach over 1000 PWDs in the next one year. We are hopeful that the Business Support Training will help to transform businesses and increase profitability.
“We are grateful for the support of our existing and new funders who will be supporting some of these programs, including the ACT Foundation, US Mission to Nigeria, and Ishk Tolarm Foundation.”
