Durian, a social venture committed to empowering rural communities to become self-sufficient through transforming their local waste into value has shown the result of its engagement in Imafon community and it is highly commendable. The rural children space at Imafon in Akure North LGA, Akure Ondo state were the recipients of a month long educational programme which started in February 2018, set aside for children to learn and study while having fun too.

However, when the volunteers from Durian began to interact with the children of Imafon, they discovered a troubling problem, the children who came for meetings were often barefoot and the few children who had footwear had shoes and sandals that were in terrible shape. Spurred by the peculiarity of this problem, the founder Tony Joy decided to incorporate vocational training into the programme at the children learning space. The children were taught how to make sandals from old car tires and it seems they took the new skill quite fast.

Major takeaways from this is that vocational training can often be just as beneficial to the lives of disadvantaged children as Western education. They’ve been trained on how to make sandals from tires, they’ve been trained on how to repair it and this new skill is one that the children can commercialize for extra income.

This system of imparting knowledge is one that will always work if implemented adequately. The fact that the children will be exposed to craftwork will help in bringing them to the children space from time to time. This innovation from Tony Joy through Durian is a concrete way of fast-tracking development at the rural areas. It is also a means of creating economic hubs at the rural areas which will reduce the unending search for a non-existing life in the city which has increased rural-urban drift.

The main objective of Durian is to empower rural communities to self-sufficient through transforming their local waste into value and they are getting the expected results.

To further understand what Durian does, YNaija visited the Akure waste village and… watch the video below: