About SEF
The hallmark of any successful 21st century economy is the formulated development of its youths to attain levels of sophistication and preparedness to meet the challenges of nation building. This is done through a deliberate policy of harnessing; honing and channeling their skills to achieving predetermined national goals that would ensure good standards of living. These skills are acquired through the traditional mode of formal education and the less often treaded path of informal education. There is no gainsaying the fact that while the two forms of education are important, our school system focuses on the former while giving little or no consideration to the latter. Consequently, this has left gaping wounds in our educational and economic systems as our tertiary institutions annually churn out millions of job-seeking graduates instead of solution-creating and proactive entrepreneurs.
The education policy makers and the International Education community is moving away from raising literary levels and increasing access to secondary and higher education towards skills required by the workforce to promote economic growth.
The current data shows that 42% of the Nigerian population, which are estimated at 67million Nigerian youths are faced with unemployment challenges.
To merge and amalgamate these gaps in our economic and educational landscape, International Psychometric Centre in partnership with our partners, conceived systematic, strategic and sustainable ways to effectively combine the formal and informal educational approaches in building, training and preparing young Nigerians to ably function in the modern day entrepreneurial landscape and highly competitive multifaceted workplace. At the core of the solutions crafted by IPCentre in building these future builders of our burgeoning economy is Students Enterprise Fund, SEF.
At IPCentre, we believe that education without employment vis a vis, empowerment is baseless. One of the glorious part and uniqueness of IPCentre is its decision to set up a special scheme to assist students in the areas of talents and innovations called, “Students Enterprise Fund” (SEF).
SEF is funding opportunity for entrepreneurial Nigerian students through an annual competition. The endowment, which comes as part of corporate social responsibilities from IPCentre, Access Bank Plc, Capital 3 Limited and other partners is meant to fund all students from all disciplines and departments in their entrepreneurial drive and accelerate the impact of research by building links with industry, public sector services and the wider public.
This scheme also helps selected students by further applying for funding to assist successful student to implement a viable but complex projects through the entrepreneurship Transfer Partnership Program with international donors and Partners. Each year students get the opportunity to pitch for investment from the N500 Million Student Enterprise Fund through a competition entitled “College Academy Contest Series, CACS.”