International Breweries Foundation through its youth enterprise empowerment scheme, Kickstart Initiative, has empowered young Nigerian entrepreneurs with N100 million.
The corporate social investment scheme initiated by the foundation, the CSR arm of International Breweries Plc, gave out grants totalling N60 million cash to 50 young entrepreneurs across Nigeria as well as training, mentoring and ancillary costs worth another N40 million to other teeming youths.
Kickstart Initiative empowers young entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 35 and has been activated in the South-Western and South-Eastern parts of Nigeria since 2015 before evolving into a full-scale national programme in 2019.
The managing director, International Breweries, Hugo Rocha said: “for us, the Kickstart initiative is an avenue to bridge the unemployment gap by giving life to the dreams and aspirations of millions of bright and enterprising young people across Nigeria.”
According to Rocha, in the past six years, the foundation has awarded close to N400 million in grants to about 800 beneficiaries and trained close to 1,200 youths on entrepreneurship skills.
Advisory board chairman, International Breweries Foundation, Mr. Peter Bamkole, charged awardees to make good use of the training they received, work with their mentors, and judiciously channel the grant provided to grow their businesses.
Source: https://leadership.ng/ib-empowers-young-nigerian-entrepreneurs-with-n100m/