Lagos State
Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has approved the payment of N30,000 as
monthly stipend to Ready.Set.Work (RSW) interns who have been placed in
various organizations for six months.
The governor also approved N8 million in
seed funding for the top five winners of the RSW Business Pitch
Competition, whose businesses will be placed in incubation.
The beneficiaries will commence their internship and incubation, respectively, on March 1.
Special Adviser to the Governor on
Education, Obafela Bank-Olemoh, in a statement yesterday, said the
interns were part of the 2,000 final year students from six tertiary
institutions in the state who took part in the 2017 edition of the
13-week intensive entrepreneurship and employability training programme.
He said the Ready.Set.Work programme,
which held its pilot in 2016, with 500 final year students from three
tertiary institutions in the state, was scaled up in 2017 to 12,000
students from six institutions, including Lagos State University,
University of Lagos, Lagos State Polytechnic, Lagos State College of
Health Technology, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education and Michael
Otedola College of Primary Education.
“In 2016, we placed 76 students in
internship with partner organisations like PwC, SystemSpecs, Total,
GTBank, FCMB and Access Bank, which provided six-month paid internship
opportunities for RSW graduates. The governor further expanded the
scheme by approving funds to place an additional 100 RSW graduates in
internship positions with SMEs across Lagos State, with monthly stipends
provided by the government.
“In 2017, we were able to scale up and
secure internship slots in about 180 organisations across the state for
1,000 top performing RSW graduates. The placement process involved a
series of internship fairs at which companies had the opportunity to
interview and select their interns from a pool of qualified candidates,”
Bank-Olemoh said.
He also disclosed that preparation
for Ready.Set.Work 2018 has commenced, adding that the programme would
be expanded to train 25,000 while 5,000 final year students would
participate in the 13-week face-to-face classes while 20,000 students in
their penultimate year would take part in the RSW Online Academy.
Besides, Bank-Olemoh said the programme
will also increase the number of participating schools to accommodate
more students in the program.
The new schools are Yaba College of Technology, Federal College of Education (Technical) and Caleb University.
The governor’s aide added that the
inclusion of new schools was in line with Ambode’s commitment to
ensuring that every student who graduates from any tertiary institution
in Lagos State is prepared for the world of work as an employer of
labour or a value-adding employee.
While calling on professionals from
different sectors to join the RSW Faculty, the largest volunteer faculty
in Nigeria, as facilitators for the 2018 training programme, he said
the faculty recruitment would kick off officially on Thursday; while
the application portal will be accessible on the programme website, www.readysetwork.com.ng.