JA Global Entrepreneurship Workshop has launched a youth conference to allow young entrepreneurs to engage on the challenges, opportunities and other critical issues affecting them.
According to the founder of JA Global Entrepreneurship Workshop, Josephine Ayittey, an average of 48% of Senior High School students who sit for WASSCE are able to further their education whilst the remaining 51% are left without any hope.
She said the Senior High School level is the best place to start developing entrepreneurship skills in an individual as such they form a greater part of participants for the workshop.
So far 72 Senior High Schools and 11 tertiary institutions have signed up to participate in the workshop. Some youth organisations have also shown interest in joining the workshop.
She said, “If we could have a platform that would engage young people with regard to building something for yourself because entrepreneurship skills should be set from a certain level and we believe that senior high school students should be the focus.”
To ensure that participants don’t lose the knowledge they obtain from the workshop, Josephine Ayittey said entrepreneurship clubs are going to be established for them in their schools.
She said, “We want to be able to have those clubs and then we give them course models as they graduate through first term, second term, we’re going to be able to monitor whatever thing they're going to do. We’ll organise workshops for them per the industries specific that they want to go into”.
She added that “we are trying to get people to understand that when you are in a certain society for a while you need to be able to look around and identify problems in it and create a solution for it. That is what you’re going to get value for and that is what makes you essentially an entrepreneur so if you’re able to identify whatever problem it is in the community or whatever talent it is that you want to develop into a career we’re going to give you the platform to engage in an internship programme.”
Chief Executive Officer of African Brand Warrior, Fatima Almohamed who is one of the speakers at the workshop said she will be focusing on helping participants understand how to position themselves on the market to ensure their businesses does not collapse after a few months of existence.
The two-day workshop is on the theme: “Building SME and raising the next crop of business entrepreneurs in Ghana, students should be the primary focus
Topics to be treated include; finance, law, skill acquisition, leadership, marketing and planning as well as strategy, communication and public speaking all in relation to entrepreneurship.
