THE NEXT ECONOMY

This is Funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the support of SOS CV, The Netherlands, and its implemented in over 4 African Countries, including Nigeria by SOS CV Nigeria, 1% Club, and ENVIU, in collaboration with local partners as implementers. This is Funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the support of SOS CV, The Netherlands, and its implemented in over 4 African Countries, including Nigeria by SOS CV Nigeria, 1% Club, and ENVIU, in collaboration with local partners as implementers. The program trains, coaches and mentors young people towards having startups and employment in the job market. Since 2016, nearly 2100 youths have been trained. The Next Economy empowers youth in Nigeria, Mali, Somaliland, Somalia, and Kenya to unleash their talents, build their confidence and hone the skills they need for a successful career in a job or as an entrepreneur. To accommodate the diverse ambitious of young people entering the labor market, together with our local partners we offer three different programs: Make it Work, Get Started and Build your Business.

• 1. Make it work & Get StartedMake it Work is aimed at launching careers by transferring useful employability skills to increase the chances of finding sustainable employment. The program inspires, builds skills and matches youth with potential employers for internships/traineeship. In 6 months you can get from idea to start-up. Get started focusses on aspiring entrepreneurs and supports them in building solid business models. Through meetings, tools, mentoring new business ideas are shaped and tested in the market.
• 2. Build Your BusinessDuring Build your Business supports promising start-ups to come to the next level. Ventures with scale potential get one-on-one support and coaching to successfully scale-up their ventures.

Participating in our programmes is enabling SOS Children’s Villages Nigeria to build the capacity of 20 youths (9 females, 11 males) so that they can provide ICT business support to other young people in the community who are actively running their own businesses. The 20 youths have been trained in video production and editing, professional photography, social network marketing, branding, website design and management. The youth will create a support system that will be used to cultivate a social business community, to build their own brands and help drive revenue for their peers who have products that they want to raise awareness about or put up for sale.

Goodman FSP Programme in Isolo Lagos is part of the implementation of the Children’s Villages programme and the SOS Children’s Villages of Tomorrow in the Lagos programme. The programme will support us to reach an additional 1008 and children and 250 families in the community. Two key innovations from the MFSII Ejigbo FSP will be incorporated. The first anchors child-focused intervention in public schools, including water, sanitization and hygiene improvements, and extracurricular clubs centered on health and hygiene, sexual and reproductive health, and financial literacy. The second focuses on facilitating civic driven change by supporting community based organizations, recruiting volunteers to serve as civic actors, and establishing a Community Child Protection Monitoring Committee.

Deutsche Postal DHL Group and SOS Children’s Villages International have been partners in the Go-Teach program since 2011. The main purpose of this partnership is to foster the empowerment and employability of young people from challenged socio-economic backgrounds who are enrolled on SOS Children’s Villages programmes. Employees of the Group volunteer their time to mentor the youth in their transition to the world of work. They seek to inspire and motivate these young individuals as they prepare their first step into the world of work by sharing their own professional and personal experiences. Improving employment opportunities through individual support, the partnership covers a wide variety of activities which can be clustered into the following categories:

• 1.Job orientation – to educate teens about the job market
• 2.Soft and basic skills training – to enable access to the job market
• 3.Exposure to a professional working environment –to gain initial work experience
• 4.Training and support for establishing own businesses.
  SOS CV Nigeria joined the programme on 2005 and within that time, 238 youths have been taking part in the programme and have either completed the internship, job shadowing or received one form of soft skills and career mentoring, while 40 DHL staffs have participated as mentors on the programme. From the partnership with DHL, 2 youths have been given job placements.