Entrepreneurship Pre-Retirement Training at Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigeria 2016

This is the second year being called upon to take on Pre-Retirement Entrepreneurship training for Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) staff, who have worked for a long time at CBN and are getting ready for retirement.

The Pre-Retirement Entrepreneurship training objective is to start preparing CBN staff for Retirement Planning and Post Retirement. Last year, I had the privilege of training two different groups, this year it was four groups in the span of two months. Each group is uniquely different from each other, participants are eager to see each other from different departments and states because they all travel to Lagos State for their training, they learn a lot about pros and cons of retirement, how to deal with the transition, changing mindset from an employee to an entrepreneur and re-branding to different career or business, financial planning, following their passion, learn new skills and business development.

The power of business networking was a topic well received compared to last year training among participants. Business networking online and offline was one of the hot topics that I had to do a lot of convincing and gave several case studies for participants to see the need to stay connected as retirees in other to leverage on each others wealth of knowledge, experience and open doors of opportunities for each other in their journey of retirement together.

Most participants were very open-minded and decided to give social media a try as a tool for business networking. Guess what, they are all on WhatsApps group now networking and sharing information and resources on all things retirement with each other.

In their own words to me;

“If there is any training that remains and always refreshing in my memory is sister Topsie course. Beautiful channels to use and call ourselves together. I pity our colleagues who did not have opportunity to link up. It’s quite interesting, good platform for knowledge sharing, in this group, do dull moment, you will never walk alone.”—Maqual F.

“Aunty Topsie, you are a great initiator. Your creativity will take you to great forums for presentation-United Nation -UN. God will always make you the head and above only.” – Abigail O.

It’s always a real honor and privilege to be before groups of retirees to share my knowledge with them, so I don’t take the opportunity for granted rather I cherish it because by all standard they are all my big aunties and uncles attending my training sessions.

I call it GRACE from God and it also a good way to end 2016 training, looking forward to training another batch of upcoming retirees in 2017 not only in Central Bank Nigeria (CBN), but other organizations as well in Nigeria and across Africa.