Lagos State opens website to register undergraduates for RSW scheme. (Details)

The Lagos State Government on
Thursday, 15th June announced the opening of its website
to register intending applicants for the 2017
edition of Ready.Set.Work (RSW) scheme.

RSW is an entrepreneurship and employability
initiative designed to equip final year students
of tertiary institutions in the State with the right
skills to add value to the society.

Mr Obafela Bank-Olemoh,  Special Adviser to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode
on Education,
disclosed this at a news conference.

Further adding that,
interested applicants would be able to access
the website  via
www.readysetwork.com.ng from June 16, while
the training will run from July 1 to September
16, 2017.

He made it known that, as an improvement on the initiative
which started in 2016, students of six tertiary
institutions in the State would benefit, while
three centres have been designated to host the
training.

The six institutions, according to Bank-Olemoh include:
Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education
(ACCOED)
Lagos State College of Health
Science (LASCOHET)
Lagos State Polytechnic
(LASPOTECH)
Lagos State University (LASU),
Michael Otedola College of Education
(MOCPED) and
University of Lagos (UNILAG).

Bank-Olemoh added that, out of the 12, 000 students,
2,000 final year students would be selected for
the training at the three designated centres,
while the remaining 10,000 would be selected
from students in their penultimate year at the
institutions and trained through the online
platform and also registered for the RSW
Academy.

According to him:
“When the administration of Governor
Ambode came on board, one of the issues he
was confronted with from the private sector
was that there were major gaps in the work
readiness of graduates, and his immediate
response was to come up with a scheme to
equip graduates from our tertiary institutions
with the right skills needed to add value to the
society.
“And so, the vision of the RSW is that every
graduate from a tertiary institution situated in
Lagos must have the knowledge, skills and
attitudes required to gain meaningful
employment or be self-employed and our plan is
to train all graduates in tertiary institutions
through the RSW.”

He further included that, beneficiaries of the scheme would be
selected to participate only on competence, and
would be trained for thirteen weeks on labour
market, mindset reorientation, 21st century
skills, entrepreneurship, employability skills and
teacher track.

He concluded by adding that, about 750 of the beneficiaries would be
helped to secure internship placement and
given skill for life, while there would also be
seed funding for winners of the business pitch
competition to be held as part of the training.
Responding to questions on sustainability of the
scheme and the need to accommodate other
tertiary institutions in the State, Bank-Olemoh
said plans are afoot to integrate the RSW into
the education curriculum of the State, and also
expand the modules as well as the benefiting
institutions.
Out of the 500 students that were registered for
the scheme in 2016, only 422 graduated after
the rigorous training with Sarunmi Oluwafemi
and Dada Samuel who emerged as the overall
winners of the pitch competition walking away
with N6million seed funding and N100, 000
monthly working capital for six months.
The second and third place winners also got
N500, 000 and N250, 000 respectively with
N100,000 working capital for six months.