By Maxwell Effiong And Emmanuel Eni
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, have been charged to embrace entrepreneurial development for easy spiritual reliance.
This was the central theme of the multi-stake career fair, organised by the church in Calabar, where thousands of young men and women were urged to be self reliant both physically and spiritually.
The Manager of the West Africa area self-reliance, Mrs. Mariam Asiape while addressing members in the fair, advised them to take advantage of the fair, develop and make themselves better entrepreneurs.
“Our duty is to support you to become self-reliant, when you are temporary self-reliant it will be easy for you to be spiritually self-reliant. When you do not have what to eat my dear brothers and sisters, it would be difficult for you to concentrate on the industry, it would be difficult for you to provide service to other members because you are not fit,” she said.
Continuing, she added that: “Self-reliance is like (a) coin that has two sides- physical and the spiritual side. If we are striving to be like Jesus Christ then we ought to find a way to become self-reliant.”
Family service specialist, Mrs. Tamara Dadson who spoke passionately on emotional and mental health self-reliance said they were in Calabar to share with members some resources that they can easily access anytime they find themselves overwhelmed with challenges and issues of unemployment adding that for them to be self-reliant is to come together just as they have come together to assist and encourage people get technical and vocational skills to work for themselves.
Also, the Senior Training Development Officer, Mr. Agba Williams who represented the Area Manager, Industrial Training Fund (ITF) Calabar area office, earlier disclosed that the high rate of unemployment in the country led the ITF to train two hundred and five (205) Cross Riverians in Lagos State.
On his part, the Director Entrepreneurial Development Centre (EDC) University of Calabar, Professor Christine Ikpeme represented by the Deputy Director, Dr. Abang Kingsley, said the core aim of the EDC is to help youths to be self-reliant even if the job is not there saying, it is why the entrepreneurship development centres in the University of Calabar was established with professor Christine who is a Professor of food technology.
Abang said, “Skill acquisition is different from entrepreneurship” but cited a situation where some of the youths have had an occasion to air out regret of having messed up because they have nothing to do, that if they had something to do they wouldn’t have messed up.
He challenged them not to waste their resources and argued that certificate is not everything.
The vice Chairman, Calabar South Local Government council, Robert Hogan encouraged participants to take advantage of the program by way of implementation. According to him “we do not know what we have here, people pay money to get this, so take advantage of it.
High point of the event was an exhibition of several art work, pastry, chops, hamper baskets among others.
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