300 Young women benefit from entrepreneurship training

The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), Ghana with support from Mastercard Foundation has provided entrepreneurial training for a total of 300 selected young women from the Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Central regions to enable them to establish and successfully run their own businesses.

Apart from the training, CAMFED would also provide them with start-up kits and mentor the beneficiaries to become successful entrepreneurs to create employment opportunities for others.

The four-day residential training programme was organised under the auspices of the National Board for Small-Scale Industries (NBSSI).

The training programme forms part of a transition programme that CAMFED Ghana was implementing in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation.

The transition programme is aimed at providing three pathways for young women, particularly senior high school (SHS) graduates, to ensure they have a secured livelihood.

The three pathways sought to equip the young women with knowledge and skills to understand basic concepts in entrepreneurship, gain a deeper understanding of the business environment in which they operate, and also gain knowledge on setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART) goals.

Three pathways

The programme was also designed to help participants to gain knowledge in core business management skills such as record keeping, costing and pricing, as well as working capital management, and also marketing and market research.

At the closing ceremony of the programme in Tamale, the Executive Director of CAMFED, Ghana, Mr John Asibi Ali, said the programme was designed to equip young women to enable them to transition from secondary education to entrepreneurship, employment or further study.

He said the programme sought to give beneficiaries the opportunity to make informed choices on any of the three pathways.

He added that young women who went into entrepreneurship were provided with training, start-up kits, internships, peer mentoring and tailored business advisory support from NBSSI.

Mr Ali congratulated the beneficiaries for making themselves available for the training and urged them to implement the knowledge and skills they have acquired during the training to enable them to succeed in their businesses.

He lauded the collaboration between CAMFED and NBSSI, saying it would help grow more entrepreneurs who would be the main drivers of the local economy.

The Executive Director of the NBSSI, Ms Kosi Yankey, for her part, urged the beneficiaries to network among themselves to be the synergies needed to build their businesses.

She asked them to set ambitious goals for themselves and also have the mindset that it was achievable while urging them on to never stop learning, saying there was always something new to learn.

She said it was not about book knowledge alone but life skills that would help them in their businesses.

The chairperson of the Transition Advisory Group, CAMFED, Ms Ruka Yaro, urged the beneficiaries not to allow themselves to be distracted but to remain focused in whatever they were doing.

She advised them that entrepreneurship was not that easy, especially, for young women who were desirous of attaining their ambitions in life.