NGO organises business training for youth

Tamale, July 13, GNA - Mr Nick Railston-Brown, Country Director of TechnoServe, an American NGO has attributed the failure of small businesses to expand in spite of various interventions to lack of focus and skills needed for development.

Speaking at the closing session of a one-week entrepreneurial training workshop code named "BIZCAMP 2004" in Tamale on Monday, he said it was the aim of TechnoServe to fill the service gap by providing business skills development opportunities to such entrepreneurs in the country. The workshop attended by 21 small-scale and budding entrepreneurs and school leavers from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions was aimed at assisting them to implement their business plans and ideas. It was organised by TechnoServe in partnership with the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a US-based business development organization.

Mr Railston-Brown whose speech was read on his behalf, said: "TechnoServe is not satisfied with providing the kind of assistance that merely alleviates poverty by providing basic needs, which barely sustains people.

"We want to move enterprises and people forward by providing the range of services that ensures enterprise growth and expansion". He described TechnoServe's partnership with NFTE as strategic and said it would facilitate good management, growth and expansion of rural economy and promote job creation to ensure higher incomes for an improvement in the quality of life of people living in rural areas. Mr Railston-Brown urged the participants to put the knowledge and skills they had gained to use for the benefit of their businesses and society.

He announced that the next Biz Camp would be organised soon in Ho for participants from the Volta, Eastern and Central Regions.