Tongston Holdings, promoter of entrepreneurial education organisation has awarded N1.8 million worth of prizes to students and teachers at the 1st North-East festival of literature, culture and creativity, as part of efforts to support educational development in the crisis-stricken region.
The cash prizes, as well as educational materials, were given to winners of the prose, poetry and drawing categories at the competition held at the Gombe State University and convened by the Halima Factor Community Initiative.
Each of the winners in the students’ category got cash prizes of N20,000 each while six teachers representing the winning institutions won N30,000 and secured vouchers for Tongston’s introductory entrepreneurial educators’ course (TIEEC).
Tongston Holdings Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Bello Tongo in a keynote address at the event emphasised the need for entrepreneurial education in the country to engender sustainable socio-economic development.
Tongo said the festival marked an important first step in reinvigorating the literacy levels in the region and its core objective aligned with Tongston’s cardinal values of personal, economic, socio-cultural and sustainable development.
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“Indeed, Tongston’s core proposition is premised on chronic unemployment, underemployment and unemployability amongst youth with basic/tertiary education, driven largely by the nature of the education system not preparing youth for the world of work, business or government.
“The focus is on building entrepreneurial thinking abilities whilst integrating media, finance and business to produce intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs that can drive sustainable socio-economic development in our nation and continent.
“It was on this premise that Tongston pledged its support in cash and in-kind prizes worth N420,000 to the students.
In addition, over N1.4 million worth of cash prizes of N30,000 each and vouchers to 6 educators from the representing winning educational institutions across the 6 categories, to access Tongston’s maiden first of its kind Introductory Entrepreneurial Educators Course (TIEEC),” he stated.
In a related development, Tongston Holdings won the “Top 50 organizations in Education” award for its noteworthy contributions towards the education industry at the second edition of The Global Forum for Education and Learning (GFEL), held in the United States of America (USA) recently.
Also, Tongston CEO is nominated as the first African to deliver a Keynote Speech at the upcoming global Education 2.0 Conference to be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) in March 2022 with the theme: “Bridging the Academia-Industry Skills Gap through Entrepreneurial Education”.
Education 2.0 led by the GFEL is a unique three-day, knowledge-intensive conference that brings together the most dynamic leaders in the education sector bringing fresh insights and perspectives to empower, inspire, and enrich the global learning community.
