A foundation popularly known as Sir Emeka Okwuosa Foundation (SEOF) has revealed its plan to empower secondary school students, underprivileged women and farmers with resources to improve their skills, livelihoods and communities.
This was announced by the chairman of the foundation, Mr Emeka Okwuosa, on Tuesday via a report from the inaugural SEOF Gala Night in Lagos State.
Okwuosa opined that generosity and compassion inspired him to establish SEOF.
Meanwhile, Okwuosa, a business mogul and philanthropist, noted that the foundation had been impacting lives and communities in more than 14 states of Nigeria.
While listing the states as Anambra, Borno, Adamawa, Kaduna, Abuja, Kogi, Oyo, Ekiti, Edo, Enugu, Ebonyi, Delta, Imo and Abia.
According to Okwuosa, sustainable socio-economic empowerment should be centered on providing market-facing skills and opportunities, particularly to the youth, who constitute the majority of the Nigerian and African population.
The chairman said that in 2024, the foundation would launch a national engineering competition, a women enterprise programme and an agro-cluster cooperative programme.
On his part, engineering competition would aim to identify outstanding engineering students working on innovative prototypes with real-world applications.
He said the competition is designed to encourage engineers and aspiring engineers to work toward collectively solving Nigeria’s problems.
He said that the competition could be expanded across Africa in the future.
“The women enterprise programme aims to support women entrepreneurs in scaling up their businesses through skill-building workshops, mentoring, networking opportunities and access to funding and markets.
“The agro-cluster cooperative programme aims to provide jobs and enhance food security − not only locally, but also across the country − by providing farmers access to inputs and guaranteed off-take as a catalyst for more robust farming.
“Witnessing fellow Nigerians endure hardships without attempting to alleviate their suffering is something I find impossible.
“Our goal is to teach beneficiaries how to fish so that they can feed themselves and their communities for a lifetime,” he said.
