PROOF that Nigerian youths are not all about militancy and other vices is currently being exhibited in Wannune community in Tarka Local Council of Benue State where a team of undergraduates from Benue State University is tackling the scourge of malaria death in the area.The youths, under the Students In Free Enterprise {SIFE} programme, are being trained to make meaningful contributions to nation-building by identifying major challenges in their communities with a view to designing and implementing projects that will solve the problems and improve the standard of living of the people. They are trained to apply business and economic concepts and an entrepreneurial approach to project implementation with a view to providing holistic and sustainable solution to the problems identified.According to a special report by SIFE on the project tagged 'Kick Mosquito Out' which began last year, the undergraduates identified Wannune as a community with high incidence of malaria-related deaths. The community located in the riverine area with pools of stagnant water and bushes naturally provides good breeding grounds for mosquitoes that transmit malaria parasites, all year round. Many of the people, said to be low income earners, have resorted to using locally produced anti-malaria drug which adversely affects their health, causing respiratory problems, chronic cough and catarrh.Research by the youths during their needs assessment revealed that the people had previously received donations of treated mosquito nets, but because of the cultural belief that sleeping under the mosquito net means one is dead or inviting death to, they became averse to using the product. During its research, the SIFE Team found a solution to the problem in orange peels said to be available in large quantities in the community from where they are taken to markets in other states for sale.The report reads: 'Due to bad state of the roads between the villages where the oranges are produced and the highway through which they are taken to other parts of the country, a lot of the oranges perish and are lost. The team observed that around the areas where the bad oranges are dumped, there are very few cases of malaria infection, suggesting that the oranges could contain some substances that repel mosquitoes. The oranges were taken to the laboratory for further investigations where it was discovered that indeed, the peels contain lemonine, a chemical substance which repels mosquitoes. It was also discovered that lemonine has no known side-effect on humans.'The team went ahead to extract the limonine which the members used to produce insecticide in liquid and solid forms that effectively repelled mosquitoes. Not only is it effective and acceptable, it is produced with locally sourced materials at almost zero cost.The team, working through the community leaders, also trains the people on how to produce the insecticide for domestic use.'Country Director of SIFE Nigeria, Adesuwa Ifedi who presented the report during this year's activities of the organisation in Lagos described SIFE as a non-profit global network established to provide students the needed opportunity to express what they have learnt in the classroom in the real world.It is a concept, she said, that dwells on developing leadership skills among undergraduates, preparing them for the workplace and helping them develop entrepreneurial skills, while they are still in school so that they can be better prepared for the real world and even to become employers of labour. 'Our overall goal in Nigeria is to develop leaders by 2020 who will transform the country through business. We have over the years developed a growing force of young Nigerian leaders with a different mindset that is solution-oriented,' she said.'Our youths are not doing badly,' she added. With the necessary support, Nigerian youths would go places, they compete brilliantly with their counterparts in other parts of the world. In 2003, SIFE presented her first national champion team from the University of Uyo at the SIFE world cup in Germany. The team emerged as finalist at that event. In 2011, three SIFE students from the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Taiwo Orogbangba, David Olaniyan and Toluwanimi Kolawole competed in the Microsoft Imagine cup, an annual global competition where the best brains from around the world come up with software solution to real world challenge. The trio came up with a project called 'Medicare' and named the team Nerds Inc. The teams won the competition and went on to showcase their product in New York at the global Software competition. Another SIFE Alumni, Grace Ihejiamazu, was nominated as one of the 12 nominees for the Google's young minds. Also in 2011, a SIFE alumnus, Muyideen Salawu, was named winner of the Leap Africa youth leadership Award. More recently, our own volunteer, George Ediok, was nominated for the United Nations Youth Ambassador For Peace Award. So, our youths are not lagging behind.'On the activities of the organisation since it was introduced to Nigeria, the report said: 'What SIFE simply does is to provide these students a controlled experiment before they go into the real world where they can explore their entrepreneurial instinct and creative ideas that can empower people, create jobs and to improve the quality of life of those that are living in their various communities. And as they begin to do these, they develop the skills of innovation, creativity, teamwork and leadership and basically understand what it takes to set businesses that succeed and fail and also know what it takes to work and improve the business and these concepts and ideas until they become successful and marketable as well.'Adesuwa, who noted that assisting youths, through programmes such as SIFE, to develop their talents towards practical contribution to national development requires sound financial base that sometimes compels partnership with the government, public- spirited individuals and socially responsible organizations recalled that 'when SIFE was brought into Nigeria, several corporate organizations championed by KPMG have partnered it to ensure it reaches out to most tertiary institutions in the country and provide students this opportunity to become globally competitive and to build their entrepreneurial skills. Others are First Bank Plc, Guaranty Trust Bank Plc, Nigeria Economic Summit Group, SC Johnson Wax, SEDI, Scientific Equipment Development Institute- Enugu, Interswitch, Banwo and Ighodalo, First Medical and Sterile Group. SIFE Nigeria also carries out partnership projects for various organisations. We also deliver certain special services to organisations that want to reach out to various communities nationwide. Organisations that have also supported SIFE Nigeria in the last few years include FCMB, MTN, Small and Medium Scale Enterprise of Nigeria (SMEDAN), The Coca-cola African Foundation, Coca-cola Nigeria, Accenture, FHN First Hydrocarbon Nigeria, Midwestern Oil and Gas, the US State Department, Dufil Prima Foods, UAC, Tantalizers, Unilever and VConnect.'The First Bank Plc-sponsored final round of this year's youth competition under the SIFE programme was held on Tuesday at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos where the judges declared the team from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri {FUTO} winner. The school, by implication, also won the opportunity to represent Nigeria at the SIFE world cup which will take place in September in Washington DC, USA.Through the projects that gave them victory, the FUTO students were said to have worked hard, using the SIFE principles, to expose 76 students in their community to ICT and its applications and also trained 300 students in leadership and vocation skills within one year.The winners also developed a recycling system of pure water sachets in the university community. They empowered over 60 young adults and students with business and entrepreneurial skills which made six of the students to win grants of over N30,000,000 (thirty million naira) from the YOU WIN programme to start registered business with an average projected profit of 200% within the first year. Among the positive impacts of the projects is that through these six business owners, four people have been gainfully employed.
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