Source: GidiLinks.com
The Youth enterprise with inovation Nigeria (YOUWIN) program has recently completed the screening of over twenty four thousand applicants and has now moved on to the second stage where 6000 selected individuals would be trained and on various entrepreneurial skills and business plan writing.

1,200 successful applicants will then be selected at the end of the training whereby partcipants will be expected to submit a business plan to a panel of Bank executives and successful business owners. Each of the 1,600 qualified individuals would then be qualified for a grant of between 1 million naira and 10 million Naira depending on their requirements as stated in the business plan.

These grants would then be disbursed through partrnering banks including the Bank of Industry, Zenith bank and Diamond bank and a memorandum of understanding has been signed to this effect. Banking partners are also expected to provide volunteers and mentorship support to these young entrepreneurs to enable them run their businesses efficiently to gurantee  a high success rate among the partcipants.

The cordinating minister of the economy and finance Mrs Okonjo Iweala during the MOU signing event stated clearly that the YOUWIN program is a deliberate step by the government to directly solve the problem of youth and graduate unemployment because every successful YOUWIN entrepreneur is expected to employ about 10 people thereby mobbing up over 360,000 people from the labour market over the next 3 years.

YOUWIN is a partnership initiative launched by the Federal goverment to provide grants to budding entrepreneurs with innovative Ideas.  The current YOUWIN partcipants represent the first batch of the YOUWIN program which according to the Minister of finance is expected to fund 3,600 over the next three years. She also stated that there were over 500 applicants from Nigerian youths from  the diaspora which to her was very interesting. As we all know Nigerians are very enterprising and therefore that should not come as a  surprise to her.
http://www.gidilinks.com/

Excellent idea by the govt. The big guns have been bailed out so let them bailout and support the little joes. However, until the winners are announced from the list of 6000 shortlisted can we applaud this govt for thinking outside the box.

It wasn't purely a government innitiative. Honestly speaking, the people who run our affairs don't have the capacity to think outside the box.

Whichever way you look @ it, our govt for the first time deemed it fit to provide avenue for new thinking.

Thats right, i honestly think initiatives like this should be encouraged. We are yet to see the outcome of the programme however i hope the selected candidates take advantage of it to propel and grow their business .

That surely is no innovation and I doubt anyone who had the benefit of the training will appreciate the thinking behind it. @ chipmunkey, did u apply?

^^^^Nope! I wanted too but then i was skeptical. I'm watching the program closely to see what they make of it.