Plateau records success stories in job creation scheme

Plateau records success stories in job creation scheme

N-Power volunteers offering community service in their birth place, alma mater and others who embraced entrepreneurship and became owners of integrated farms in different parts in Plateau, have recorded success stories .

Mr James Francis, a Chemistry graduate from the University of Jos, is a volunteer in the laboratory of the Primary Health Care Centre, Bukuru, Jos South Local Government Area, where he was born, and the management said it was pleased with his services.

Mr Samuel Dapil, visually impaired at two, is a toast of the Gindiri Material Centre for the Handicapped (GMCH), in Mangu Local Government Area where he teaches sciences and mathematics to blind children as well as brails the subjects.

At the Nomadic School, Mandarken, a remote community in Bokkos Local Government Area(LGA), three N-Power volunteers have combined with the only three staff members of the school to turn around the learning fortunes of some 89 pupils.

Same for Edward Dabi, an N-Power  volunteer in Bokkos, who has spent half of his stipends to open a mini integrated farm, cultivating 2.4 hectares of rice, sizable portion of potatoes and maize farm and animal husbandry.

Another volunteer, Jethro Jacobs, an animal scientist, opened a veterinary clinic at Mangu with stipends he received as N-Teach volunteer in the community.

The successes were captured when the N-Power Monitoring and Evaluation Team, led by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job creation, Mr Afolabi Imoukhuede, visited the volunteers’ places of assignment in the state.

At the PHC, Bukuru, Francis said he had opened an education trust fund in his bank where he was remitting N12,000 of his monthly stipends, to pay for a post-graduate programme in community health at the end of the volunteer programme.

“I have been part of the programme for six months now but I have been in this lab for the past five months and I have been trained in a lot of things here in the lab.

“My lab manager has actually given me a department within the lab and I take care of some special patients, documenting their test results.

“One very important part of my stay here and the most important is that I was born in this clinic. So I feel very happy to render services here.

“Due to the course of study, my lab manager and the focal person have advised me to go for my post-graduate in community health.

“And I have opened a trust fund account with my bank and out of the stipends  I get every month, I have monthly savings towards that project.

“Every month I drop N12,000 there and by January, I will have something substantial to go for my community health programme,’’ he said.

At the school for the blind, Dapil described his stay as very wonderful, saying “ I like what I am doing and I am so impressed with the teaching.

“I feel that I am helping and serving my country and I am giving my best so far’’.

The coordinator of the centre, Mr Thompson Damwesh, said Dapil was an asset to the centre.

According to him, “he is doing enough in the area of brailing.

“He is a specialist in sciences and mathematics and he brails mathematics and sciences.

“He is the only person who can do this in the country.’’

At the Nomadic School, Mandarken, a volunteer, Mr Alfred Mwanjel, who read Biology Education at the Federal College of Education, Pankshin in 2011, said he intended to extend his services to a nearby school to teach the pupils of both schools how to co-exist as Christians and Muslims.

At the Women-in-Health Centre in Marish-Kwatas, Bokkos area, a rural community, Miss Mary Musa, a 2014 Environmental Health professional, expressed  appreciation of the Buhari administration for the job creation scheme.

She said she started a private investment with her stipends and supported her parents and siblings financially since she became a volunteer.

The presidential aide on job creation expressed satisfaction with the entrepreneurial spirit of the volunteers and encouraged others to be creative and apply the same spirit, to improve their lives. (NAN)