Our goal at SOF is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, using our various areas of Education and Youth Development program.
Education & Youth Development
Education Development Programs
Education is a fundamental human right and is indispensable for the achievement of sustainable development. We are only able to empower girls, combat climate change, fight inequality and end extreme poverty if all stakeholders, including business, commit themselves to advancing the education goal. Education can also help address the mismatch between skills of the available workforce and job vacancies, which is a key problem in many markets.
Our Programs
To meet the Learning and Educational Needs of vulnerable early grade children in both rural and urban communities and the Crisis- Affected Regions, through an holistic approach that aim at addressing critical factors that affect learning, teaching, management, parental participation and responsiveness to children’s needs.
Literacy is an essential component of the right to education and a prerequisite for accessing other human rights. Hence, ensuring access to youth and adult literacy provision constitutes a major undertaking for changing the lives of millions of people who have received little to no formal education.
For them, the inability to read and write at basic levels of proficiency and to actively participate in an increasingly literate and digitized world is potentially a source of exclusion and a major barrier to their engaging more actively in political, social, cultural and economic activities and as such this support program.
STEM education is a platform for understanding and addressing the global challenges, which are ultimately environmentally centred and must be addressed through a combination of local learning and action in addition to a wider systematic mindset shifts, hence the pressing need to re-orient STEM education along the line of sustainability.
Addressing the fact that such large proportion of the population are not learning the basic skills they need to enter the labour market is more than a moral obligation. It amounts to an investment in sustainable growth and prosperity. For both the government and individuals, there is a direct and indisputable link between access to quality education ,and economic and social development.
We believe that there is more that we can do as Individuals, Groups, Corporate organizations etc., to savage the dwindling state of Education in Nigeria and when we help a child get access to education, we give the child confidence, courage and life skills to become greater than poverty.
Youth Development
Africa has the youngest population globally which makes the subject of youth development very critical. Nigeria is a young, diverse, and dynamic country that abounds with potential. It is critical that young people are positioned as agents of change who can advocate for their own future.
To succeed in this, we believe youth must be put at the helm of change efforts and gain critical life skills that will enable them to improve their world. SOF Youth development focuses on empowering young talent for wealth creation.
Our Approach
- SOF works inside and outside of the formal education system to improve the skills young people are learning and to ensure that these skills match what is demanded by the labor market.
- We also work with schools and out-of-school programs, as well as other service providers to support youth to gain skills, assets, contribute to their communities, create a sense of belonging and commitment, convey new norms and expectations for youth behavior, and provide meaningful opportunities for youth and adults to develop positive relationships.
- We work with technical and vocational education and training institutions to build skills for productive businesses livelihoods and careers by unlocking the potentials to gain decent jobs for private sector employers interested in fulfilling workforce needs, and growing in emerging and underserved markets.
Our Prorams
SOF-YEEP (Youth Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Program) is designed to support and empower youths in both the rural and urban regions, who are into micro enterprises, mini-trading, new in business or are set to venture into entrepreneurship.
Y-novate offers youth skills on latest changes in the tech industry, builds their capacity and supports innovative tech solutions and ideas to address immediate and local societal challenges.
SOF Creative-Minds Capacity Development (CCD Initiative): Creativity is often the biggest asset for young people who can afford to experiment and take calculated risks in the early stage of their lives and careers when a whole range of possibilities exists.
SOF Work Experience & Skills Development Program (WESDEP): With rising youth unemployment and underemployment levels, Nigeria produces over 500,000 graduates annually into the labor market. Despite this human capital, the employment and labor markets in public and private sector do not favor fresh graduates with limited experience and in most cases mismatched skill sets.