Ms Kosi Yankey, the Executive Director of the NBSSI exchanging the signed MoU with Mr John Asibi Ali, the National Director, CAMFED Ghana

CAMFED, NBSSI sign MoU to train girls

Rebecca Quaicoe Duho Oct - 10 - 2018 , 02:43

The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) at the weekend signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) to train young girls to go through successful transition after school to become entrepreneurs.

Dubbed, “Enable young women to transition from school to entrepreneurship, further study and transformative leadership in Ghana”, the training will also include advocacy and policy engagement.

The establishment of a working partnership with the NBSSI is within the framework of a transition programme that CAMFED is implementing in partnership and with funding support from the MasterCard Foundation.

MoU

The National Director, CAMFED Ghana, Mr John Asibi Ali before signing the MoU, said “as a key player in the development sector, CAMFED accepts the widely-held belief that in that sector, no single organisation has all the answers to solve the unemployment problems and that it takes collaboration and working partnerships with like-minded organisations to achieve our set goals and objectives”.

He was hopeful that CAMFED’s working partnership with the NBSSI would be a huge step towards “our mutual goal of promoting and developing the entrepreneurial initiatives of the girls we serve and the micro, small and medium enterprises sector in Ghana as a whole”.

He said the collaboration would help equip young women with the right skills and resources for the job market.

The Executive Director of the NBSSI, Ms Kosi Yankey, who signed on behalf of the organisation, said the NBSSI believed in supporting young women and girls to become self reliant.

She said the NBSSI with its women entrepreneurship unit supported women to have their own work and earn an income for themselves.

Although the organisation she said, was resource constrained, it had over the years worked effortlessly to train people in small and medium enterprises, using its experts located in all the 10 regions of the country.

The transition programme

With 23,660 Camfed Alumni Association (CAMA) members, the organisation offers peer support, mentoring, and training and leadership opportunities for young women.

Over 116,393 pupils are supported to go to primary school in CAMFED’s operational areas in 31 districts in the three regions in the north and the Central Region.

Also, 68,908 girls are given targeted support by CAMFED with scholarships for their secondary education which covers needs that include school fees, uniforms, books, pens, boarding fees and disability aids.

Collaboration

The two organisations would work together to undertake advocacy on gender stereotypes and promote equity for female entrepreneurship.

CAMFED, as part of the collaboration, would share relevant experiences, expertise, available data and best practices with NBSSI to guide interventions.

The two would also develop work plans to guide their activities, with CAMFED providing the requisite resources for the NBSSI to undertake planned programmes.

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