four poverty eradication intervention schemes namely, Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES), Rural Infrastructure Development Scheme (RIDS), Social Welfare Service Scheme (SOWESS) and Natural Resource Development and Conservation Scheme (NRDCS). 6.2.2 Since 2008, the programmes have been modified to reach the poorest of the poor in the society and address the challenges of trans-generational poverty, by ensuring that children of the vulnerable members of the society in the rural communities, who were of school age, were enlisted in schools. These programmes were implemented in collaboration with the Millennium Development Goals Office of the President, and were of three types: namely, MultiPartner Micro Finance (MPMF), Conditional Cash Transfer/Care of People ( CCT/COPE ) and Village Economic Development Scheme (VEDS). 6.2.3 As the names imply, the MPMF was a micro credit scheme financed jointly by the Federal and State Governments in which beneficiaries were required to make a 10% minimum contribution in whatever project they wished to be engaged. The Federal Government invested more than two billion Naira in this programme, which was implemented in all the States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. 6.2.4 The CCT/COPE was a grant, a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme, in which substantive amount of money was given to identified, vulnerable families among the poorest of the poor citizens in the rural communities. This money was paid over a period of one year on the condition that these families, which must have children of primary to junior secondary school age but cannot afford to put them in school, must guarantee to enroll them into school for the family to continue accessing the payments. At the end of one year, a bulk sum of money was released to a representative of the family for him or her to start a business and continue to maintain the children in school. 6.2.5 The NAPEP Village Economic Development Solution (VEDS) was another plank in the fight against poverty, with a niche in the SMEs sector as the hub for industrial development. The programme was used to encourage the establishment of small and medium enterprises, known as Anchor Projects, in the rural 87