Shell empowers indigent youths in entrepreneurship

Many indigent citizens in Rivers State are now counting their fortunes from the empowerment program of Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC.

“Now I can feed myself, pick my bills”, Miss Celina Chikere from Eleme local government area  in Rivers State boasted as she spoke to this reporter. In her neighborhood, most people preferred to call her by the name of her flourishing restaurant, ‘De Right Choice’, which she opened after she was trained in  the  Shell’s    Enterprise Development program, Live-Wire Nigeria. Chikere is   from a middle class family in Eleme part of the state, with difficulties growing up, but she had opportunity to be trained in catering under the Shell program which came with a seed capital of N200,000 from the oil giant. 

Also another beneficiary, Gloria Bagbi, who hails from Khana local government area and trained as a hair stylists in the program got N200, 000 with which she opened a thriving hair dressing shop. She stated: “I heard about the programme and indicated interest and we were asked to start our training and the training programme lasted for three months. 

We learnt so many things; we learnt how to manage our business, how to balance our accounts and how to make our business plan. We also learnt make-up, manicure, pedicure and hair-dressing.” “So, after the programme, Shell gave us equipments and the sum of N200, 000 to start with. That was how I started my business. 

I used the money to rent a shop and since then, I have been doing well,” she said. Another beneficiary, Victor Odo from Tai local government area   also benefitted like many others from the program. He was trained in electrical installations. The two hundred thousand naira he got at the end of the exercise he said he used it to open an electrical shop at Eleme.

(Vanguard)