Promoting employability for disabled youth in Lagos, Nigeria

The theory of human capital states that ''Human capital development is the bedrock of the success or failure of any modern day nation.''


It is against this backdrop that the Star Children Development Initiative (SCDI) organized a one-day seminar and workshop on ''Promoting Employability for Youths with Disability'' took place on Thursday 21st of July 2016 at  The Social Place in Victoria Island, Lagos.

It was the first step of engineering the Nigerian society towards sensitising employers and recruitment personnel in both the public and private sectors on the need to actively recruit and employ more persons living with disabilities as well as making their work environment more user-friendly for the patronage of their customers living with a disability.

 Mrs Rosaline Fadipe, Deputy Chairman, Star Children Development Initiative, told Health Journo that today's Nigeria should be striving towards Article 28 of the United Nations CRPD which says that people with disabilities have a right to ''an adequate standard of living for themselves and their families''.

"There is ability in dis-ability, and the social stigma attached to disability needs to be de-emphasized.' she said.

"One of the major drivers of 21st century social inclusion is Information Technology; anyone in our society can go into Cyberspace. The internet is a leveler and should be deployed as a means of social inclusion for many disabled youths with basic education or job skills.

"This will help deter their need to resort to begging and other socially unacceptable activities to sustain themselves from day-to-day, and enable a proper economic value be placed on the role of people living with disabilities in our society."

"With approximately 1.5 million disabled persons of working age in Nigeria, creating an enabling environment also means improving disability access to public buildings especially to banks and other credit facilities; and to the employment market, by increasing the ability of challenged people to find jobs, thereby improving their productivity and earnings, as well as increasing the GDP of the nation.

"Vocational rehabilitation helps further enablement, if backed up by the necessary attitude and reasonable adjustments. It taps into their resourcefulness, boosts their confidence, increases their self-reliance and increases their earning capacity," she added.


The aim of the Star Children Initiative is to re-engineer attitudinal changes in our society as a whole, proactively promote disability awareness among employers in the workplace, and maximise opportunities within their workforce to utilize the untapped human resource reserve that currently exist among disabled youths in Nigeria.

Star Children Development Initiative also seeks through advocacy, to create a more tolerant and user friendly society for people living with disabilities, by pushing for the strengthening of pre-employment and transition programmes from unemployability to employability.

Another objective of the initiative is to work in partnership with other stakeholders to increase legislation and more importantly compliance; to promote inclusive growth particularly for disabled youth in Nigeria and to reduce poverty and hunger by creating opportunities, sharing the benefits of development and participating in decision-making processes.

The overall objective of this project is to create an enabling environment for the disabled youths of Lagos to be given equal access to employment opportunities for employment so that they can become more self-dependent, contribute to the economic and social development of the State.

"We hope to collaborate with the Lagos State Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment on how disabled youth can also tap into the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund of which N6.25bn is said to be up for disbursement in the first tranche," Fadipe said.

Star Children Development Initiative strongly believes there is a need to replace our social support systems of charity and welfare with increased employment, mobility, increased visibility and participation in society and independent living. All these discourage dependency and are significant factors that will accelerate the social inclusion of people living with disabilities in today's Nigeria.

"We are committed to challenging and changing the old ways of thinking, doing and the stigmatization of people living with disabilities in our Society. We know that given the right environment and support, 'Everyone is Able,'" she concluded.