The Ghana Enterprises Agency(GEA) is providing training in entrepreneurship for some selected 35 youths comprising 34 females and a male adding to an earlier 35 who were trained in a pilot programme from 24th to 29th March, 2023 making a total of 70 in the West Gonja municipality under it’s Ghana Jobs and Skills Youstart Project.
The Youstart project is a flagship programme of the Government of Ghana, considered as one of the main forms of support for the government’s top priority agenda of upgrading skills among the country’s population, creating more and better-quality jobs, and improving job outcomes for the youth.
The five days training for the Basic level of the project started on Monday May, 8th and ended on Friday, May,13th 2023 and was based on standardized, quality-assured packages in all seven districts in the Savannah Region where each district trained 70 beneficiaries using an experiential participatory approach conducive for adult learning and was also on district based and non-residential.
Mr. Alidu Ewura, the savannah regional Director for the Ghana Enterprises Agency in an interview with this source indicated that, the World Bank is providing financial and technical support to the Government of Ghana (GoG) for the implementation of the Ghana Jobs and Skills Project.
Mr. Ewura further said the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) is implementing Component 2.1 of the Project which has the objective of providing entrepreneurship training and competitive Startup grants to youth who have the potential to start a business.
He also indicated that, the project is geared to train 50,000+ youth with 50% of their target Beneficiaries being women and a Priority given to Persons with Disability or physically challenged, Unemployed youth and existing MSME’s owned by school dropouts between the ages of 18 yrs to 40 yrs.
On how application processes were done, Mr. Alidu Ewura explained that, an online portal was opened in November, 2022 for interested persons to apply to be enrolled into the project though which the Agency received 288,000 applications, adding that after the application, those who scored the past mark were shortlisted for the training.
He also noted that, the training has been broken down into phases due to the number of applicants to ensure that the limit the trainer-participant ratios to provide a quality learner experience.
The training will be in 3 levels which includes; Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. At the basic Level, all participants will go through a basic training of 5 days where they will need to participate fully to complete the level to progress to the intermediate level.
At intermediate Level, the training will last for 10days where Participants will need to participate fully to complete the intermediate level to progress to the advanced level training.
Also at the intermediate stage, existing youth businesses and unemployed youth with vocational skills will be eligible to apply for grant support. The grant support at this stage is highly competitive.
The Advanced Level training will last for 15days. It will involve an incubation process to finetune business plans/idea, provide coaching and mentoring and access to network events/ trade shows for the participants.
ABOUT COMPETITIVE GRANTS
Grants will be in the form of cash grants for working, capital regulatory and formalization support, purchase of ICT business solutions and start-up Kits (Tools, Equipment and Technologies).
It was also noted that not all participants will receive the grant because it is a competitive grant and they will have to go through a selection criterion to qualify.
The beneficiaries were taken through topics in
Entrepreneurship, financial literacy, kaizen, coaching, and mentoring training among others with all participants receiving certificates for participating in the programme.
He however disclosed that, their Business Advisory Centre (BAC) heads will be available to give business development support services to participants whether they are qualified or not.
