The Louis Awode Foundation is set to unleash a new wave of young entrepreneurs in the country through a pioneering five-year programme.
By equipping schoolchildren with skills in fashion design and business, the foundation aims to shift their mindsets from job-seeking to job-creating.
Louis Awode, the founder of the foundation, explained that the initiative is designed not merely as vocational exposure, but as an early entrepreneurship pipeline that introduces children to the principles of creativity, enterprise development, value creation and financial independence long before they enter Nigeria’s volatile labour market.
Awode said the programme represents a deeply personal intervention.
Having grown up in Ogbere, Ijebu East Local Government Area, he understands how quickly childhood confidence can be eroded by poverty, and how rarely disadvantaged children are encouraged to see entrepreneurship as a viable life path.
“I grew up in an environment where lack was normal. There were days when something as basic as proper clothing could affect whether a child felt confident enough to go to school,” he said.
“But beyond attendance, children also need to feel capable of building something of their own. That belief is what drives entrepreneurship,” he noted.
The foundation’s entrepreneurship-driven training model will combine fashion production skills with lessons in business planning, customer engagement, branding and financial literacy.
Participants will learn not only how to make garments, but also how to run micro-enterprises — pricing products, managing clients, marketing their work and reinvesting profits.
This emphasis on enterprise responds directly to the nation’s youth employment reality.
With youth unemployment persistently high and the formal economy absorbing only a fraction of new entrants each year, industry observers have repeatedly identified the creative sector as one of the few accessible entry points for young entrepreneurs with limited start-up capital.
Parallel to the training programme, the foundation will launch Cloth-A-Child in May across selected primary and secondary schools in Lagos and Ogun States.
While the initiative will provide essential clothing kits to disadvantaged pupils, Awode insists its underlying purpose is also entrepreneurial.
“Clothing a child is not charity. It is restoration of confidence, identity and the right to belong in a classroom.”
“And once a child feels they belong, they can begin to imagine themselves not just as students, but as creators, innovators and business owners.”
The Cloth-A-Child initiative will be implemented in partnership with ClovisCasuals, an Awode-founded Nigerian apparel brand that has carved a notable presence in the country’s fashion scene through collaborations with music stars Asake and Olamide, as well as influencers Yhemolee and MC Rhelax.
“We want children to leave school understanding that they can create value with their skills. Entrepreneurship is not something they should discover out of desperation later in life.
It should be something they grow into with confidence,” he said.
The first phase of the initiative will reach hundreds of pupils in Lagos and Ogun, with plans to expand to more disadvantaged states nationwide.
