Abstract:
The study investigated the socio-economic characteristics of respondents in the study area, various skills acquired by the respondents, the level of improvement in the respondents’ socio-economic status and the attitude of youths towards skill acquisition program in the study area Primary data were collected with the aid of well-structured questionnaire from one hundred and thirty eight respondents. A proportionate sampling procedure was used to select the respondents who acquired skill from NDE in year 2014 and 2015, across three local government areas in each of the three senatorial districts of Ekiti State. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics such as frequency counts, percentages, mean and Z-score. The inferential statistics used were Chi-Square and T-test. Result obtained shows that 59.4% of the respondents fell between the age brackets 20-30 years, 54.3%, were male, while 45.7% were female 31.9% had tertiary Education, 52.9% had a household size of 1-5 persons, 80.4% were members of cooperative societies, 84.1% were Christian, 14.6%, 13.8%, 12.3% acquired skills in fashion designing, barbing and hairdressing respectively. 81.9% had low socio-economic status before skills acquisition, while 23.9% had low socio-economic status after the skills was acquired, 18.1% had high socio-economic status before skills acquisition, while 76.1% had high socio-economic status after acquiring skills, 33.37%,63.8% and 2.9% could feed always and sometimes respectively after skills acquisition, 30.4%, 63.0%, and 6.6% respectively met household need always, sometimes and not at all before skills acquisition, while 89.19% and 10.9% met household needs after the skills always and sometimes, 31.9% could cloth oneself adequately before the skills, while 97.8% could cloth oneself adequately after the skills acquisition, 1.4% were able to carry social responsibilities the skills always and sometimes, 31.9% could cloth oneself adequately before the skills, while 97.8% could cloth oneself adequately After the skills acquisition, 1.4% were able to carry social responsibilities before the skills, 3.6%, 9.1%, and 87.3% save daily, weekly and monthly respectively before the skills and 60.1% had no active saving before the skill, 100% had active saving after skills acquisition, 56.5%, 39.9% and 3.6% saved actively after
acquiring skills daily, weekly and monthly respectively,47.8% and 52.2% had poor and fair knowledge of the skills respectively before the skills, while 100% had adequate knowledge of the skills after skills acquisition while 7.2% had unfavourable attitude toward the programme. Results also revealed that 92.8% of the respondents had favourable attitude towards the skill acquisition program. The sex of the respondents was statistically significant for all the activities except poultry production (x=0.04, p> 0.05). There was significant difference between the respondents’ socio-economic status before and after acquiring skills (sig=0.00)
