Family Homes Funds; Nigeria’s Social Housing Fund has partnered with foremost Artisans Training organisation C-STEMP to empower artisans in the building industry. In a sensitization workshop recently held by the organisations in collaboration with property developers, the stakeholders engaged in strategies to ensure that artisans see beyond employment and focus on employability.
The Family Homes Funds, whose mandate is to create up to 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs while facilitating homeownership in Nigeria has adopted the training program as a strategy towards delivering quality affordable housing while creating jobs for our previously unemployed youth.
Under the scheme, young Nigerians undergo an apprenticeship programme while working on the Family Homes Funds Building sites to strengthen their skills with a professional edge fit enough for international standards. Family Homes Funds would also be collaborating with the Government’s Social Investment Programme’s N-Power Build, whose trained youth can be apprentices on the developers’ sites. According to the Head of Strategy and Business Performance at FHFL, Dr Banke Abejirin, Family Homes Funds sees housing as a means to security, good health, productivity, wealth and decent jobs. Given our mandate, our success is not complete without the jobs being created. The apprenticeship scheme therefore aims to create jobs for unemployed youth, while improving the quality of skills of the workers across our construction sites, and providing a strong team of skilled artisans for the industry.
The workshop which held in Abuja last week had major stakeholders in the skills empowerment present.
The MD/CEO of C-STEMP, Mr Anthony Okwa (fniob) in his presentation (on behalf of the National Board for Technical Education, NBTE), titled “Overview of the National Skills Qualification Scheme” enumerated the framework supporting the skills training. The NBTE is a board of education which coordinates all aspect of Technical and Vocational Education and Training falling outside the Universities. Following that was a presentation by C-STEMP on the Apprenticeship Scheme Implementation. The details of the training programme which is anchored on apprenticeship (on-the-Job training) with a blend of formal and informal training apprenticeship, were laid out to the developers, including the operational implications and roles of partners involved.
The developers, who have been working with FHFL expressed their interest in participating in the apprenticeship scheme. Architect Nuru Nyerere-Inyangete described the current situation at the Asaba Family Housing Estate as an informal apprenticeship program. She mentioned that the formalisation of the arrangement will be a welcome development.
Other stakeholders present at the event include Dr Opaluwah of the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria, Mr Barry Nielson of the Construction Industry Training Board of Northern Ireland (CITB NI), representatives from N-Power Build, National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and Project Managers from the FHFL project sites.
Family Homes Funds Limited is a financing organisation set up in September 2016 to facilitate the provision of decent homes for low income Nigerian families, and create jobs in the process.
FHFL is the housing programme of the social intervention programme (SIP) of the Federal Government of Nigeria, improving the quality of lives of Nigerians, particularly the poor, vulnerable and unemployed.
C-STEMP Construction Skills Training and Empowerment Project Ltd/Gte is a pioneer construction skills training provider approved by National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and with the primary mandate of spurring a network of training providers across the country.
