The Wenchi Business Advisory Centre (BAC) Office of the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) has held a skills development training programme for applicants under the YouStart Ghana Jobs and Skills Project.
The 5-day workshop was organised for the first batch of shortlisted applicants for the project.The next batch is expected to follow in the coming days.
The project introduced by the government, seeks to equip the youth with the requisite employable skills and establish the successful trainees in business with some funding.
The project is a mechanism through, which the government intends to provide funding and technical support to the youth in entrepreneurship to assist them start, develop and grow their own businesses.
This is aimed at making them business owners and employers instead of employees and unemployed.
In an address delivered on his behalf by the Municipal Information Officer, Stanick Sofel Amuzu Kpodo, to open the Training Workshop, the Municipal Chief Executive, Mr. Alexander Obour Kwadwo Damoah, charged the participants not to only depend on white-collar jobs, but take advantage of the numerous government youth centered policy initiatives as an impetus to develop themselves to reduce unemployment.
The MCE again asked them to see the project as a golden opportunity and excel in all the stages of the training programme to enable them acquire the needed funding support to start or grow their own businesses.
He used the opportunity to enumerate some Local Economic Development (LED) programmes initiated by the assembly to boost business operations in the municipality.
On her part, the Wenchi BAC Head, Evelyn Yangnuu, explained that the training programme is in three levels; Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. Participants would have to go through all the levels.
Successful participants would be selected from one stage to another based on performance until the last stage where business start-up grants will be made available for those who successfully completed the program.
According to her the start-up funds will be given to entrepreneurs with high potential to succeed in business and operate in any of the non-resource-based sectors.
Thirty-nine participants selected from the municipality have been trained in the first batch.The participants were taken through basic training components such as financial management, business idea generation, entrepreneurship, amongst others.
