By Michael Adesanya /Abeokuta
The lead planner, event consultant at M19 Event Consult, Princess Bola Ayedun-Solate has charged the Nigerian youth to take advantage of opportunities that abound in event planning.
She urged them to diversify and learn the business of event planning in order to meet their daily needs and combat the problem of unemployment.
The Popular Event Planner gave the charge on Tuesday at the 2024 event management training held in Abeokuta, the Ogun State.
Ayedun-Solate explained that with the current economic realities, the youth must start their own businesses as well as create job opportunities for others.
The training had sessions on project management, event management, event planning, event coordination, how to leverage new media for event planning, among others.
Her words: “We are going to have up to 10 facilitators,we have a lot of modules the modules are like 15 modules so we are going to have different people teaching them. They are going to learn the business of event planning so that when they are done they can start their business. We are also going to coin a business name for them at this training”.
She said “ We are focusing on so many topics like project management, event management, event planning, event coordination, and how they can tap into the new media around event planning”.
According to her, the M19 Event Consult Academy (MECA) is aimed at training and connecting business oriented youths.
She added “ We started the training in 2019 and we call MECA (M19 Event Consult Academy) we started because I was seeing a lot of entrepreneurs around me and they like what I was doing but I never thought of having to teach anybody because I was also growing then, still trying to put my business together but they saw something in what I do and wanted to emulate it so we carved out classes for them.
I love to have someone like me in many places and also want them to do better than I do because coming to learn fro M19 is like they are learning from lets say 10 schools, I have been to more than 10 school I have seen more than 1 million events I have planned more than a thousand events so they are lear and gathering from my wealth of knowledge.
“So I see that people like what I do and want to learn from me so I don’t mind giving them my best so that I can have someone that does what I do anywhere in the world and they fo it excellently well.
“We are not just training them and leaving them, we are going to put them in a group and even connect them with vendors. We are going to continue being in their lives even after the training”.
Ayedun-Solate revealed that the registration fee was N30,000, insisting that the training will have evening session to accommodate the participants’ schedules.
“ We are starting the one for 2024. We may have like 2-3 cohorts in a year; but we are starting with the first cohort in 2024. The duration of the training is 4 weeks for this cohort. We saw that some of them are working class. They just want to diversify, they have seen who I am they have been to my event.
“ Some of them are matured people and are already working, so we had an open deal last week. We discussed on how it will best suit them so we concluded that they would like to have it in the evening.
“Some of the challenges that we have been facing are not so much. Our fees are not that expensive, when I go for master classes I spend as much as N300,000 on training, sometimes N 200, 000 and even N100, 000 and ours is just N30,000 and they can even split the amount and pay bit by bit”.
One of the trainees, Esther Oyegunle, expressed optimism that the programme will help her achieve her dream.
Oyegunle said: “ I am a fashion designer, at the end of this event I want to grow confidence in order to be able to organize, plan an event and also be able to communicate with a client. To get the right connection in the event management industry.
“I really have this confidence in M19 event. I have known M19 since 2016 and when I saw this opportunity I was so happy because this is where I can accomplish the goal I want. I know she is going to help me build that confident and give us full knowledge about the job.
“ At the end of the training I would like to go into the job fully because it’s something I have passion for and she’s my mentor”.