Unity Bank CEO Mentors 600 Young Professionals

Hamid Ayodeji

Unity Bank Plc has thrown its weight behind the 2019 YP (Young Professionals) Lagos capacity building workshop, which featured mentorship of 600 young, courageous and ambitious professionals by 60 Captains of industry in Lagos.

The programme was an avenue for the participants to build potential career defining relationships with mentors found among industry chieftains facilitating different roundtables.

According to the organisers, the YP capacity building workshop was exclusively targeted at young professionals of 35 years old and below, who in their professional or career pursuits are already budding entrepreneurship initiatives.

“We therefore convocated 60 breakfast roundtables to create interaction, experience and knowledge sharing in addition to giving opportunity for participants to benefit from consulting with captains of industry after the workshop”, Wale Adenuga, promoter of Unboxed Conferences and YP, Lagos, has stated.

Commenting on the lender’s support for the programme, Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Unity Bank, Mrs. Tomi Somefun said the bank was interested in the program due to its transformative and pivotal concept in promoting young professionals in the Micro, Small and Medium scale Enterprises (MSMEs) space. This, she said was in line with the bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility programme as well as the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Youth Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YEDP).

She stated that Unity Bank has a technology-driven banking platform, a lifestyle product with an innovative app known as UniFi that appeals to undergraduates, young school leavers and professionals in early career life, as well as young and educated craftsmen setting up workshops and businesses to achieve their aspirations, adding that the mentorship outreach connects with the Bank’s youth market proposition.

Somefun, therefore shared the optimism that the creativity of participants has received a boost from our interactions in this workshop.

“There are so many challenges associated with berthing a business in the country but by plugging into the ideas and experiences shared by captains of industry in this workshop, the minds of the young professionals has opened to a whole new world of opportunities to enable them start building businesses if they have not started already, and equally deepen their market base to even grow beyond micro, Small and Medium level they might have been operating,” she added.

The 2019 YP, Lagos is a relaxing atmosphere created for 10 people with an industry leader sitting around to take and answer questions and share insights on various aspects of entrepreneurship as well as guidance on ways to overcome challenges over a breakfast table that has been set up.

Every participant received certificate of participation signed by the leader on their table. Unity Bank partnered with other institutions such as the Bank of Industry, etransact, Mascot, mobihive, Niger Delta Exploration & Production Plc, among others, to ensure the success of the programme.

The CBN’s YEDP was launched on 15th March, 2016 to enhance the deployment of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Nigerian youths for maximum economic development.