THISDAY

Nordica Foundation Announces Second Edition of The Dr. Abayomi Ajayi Mentoring Programme

- Rebecca Ejifoma

Nordica Foundation has announced its second edition of The Dr. Abayomi Ajayi Mentoring Programme for 12 non-practicing doctors which will run from mid October this year to the end of the first quarter of next year.

The foundation noted this at a media parley, which was held in Lagos to announce the second edition.

The Convener, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, highlighte­d that the Mentoring Programme seeks to change the mindset of Nigerian doctors and hopefully stem the brain-drain by proverbial­ly teaching them how to fish instead of giving them fish.

Through the mentoring model, Ajayi said they expose young Nigerian doctors to the wealth of experience of successful Nigerians in different fields of industry as mentors. “It is to equip them with the expertise needed to build successful enterprise­s, and to help build a robust healthcare system in Nigeria”.

While conceding that the first edition was a huge success, with the 12 mentees attesting to how much they were greatly impacted by the series of training and mentor-sharing sessions, the convener anticipate­d a much more impactful edition.

He assured newsmen: “We will be deepening the scope of input in the 2nd edition, which should commence by mid October 2021 and run till the end of the 1st quarter of 2022. The call for entries is currently on-going and the selection process will be rigorously demanding on prospectiv­e entrants.”

Fully funded by the Nordica Foundation since inception, Ajayi said the life-transformi­ng project requires the support of well-meaning organisati­ons to be able to impact more doctors in their goal to increase the number of yearly participan­ts.

According to Ajayi, whose goal is simply to give back to the society, in his experience as a trained Nigerian medical profession­al, he observed that the major weakness in “Our doctors is a dearth in entreprene­urial education.

“That is, the capacity to see the breadth of opportunit­ies that brings profession­al and financial reward. It is said that success is the applicatio­n of knowledge to solve problems. In a country like ours with the myriad of challenges in healthcare, Nigerian doctors are meant to be extremely successful if they apply entreprene­urship skills.”

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