The participants in a group photo
The Youth in Ghana especially students in tertiary institutions have been urged to develop a passion for entrepreneurship as a way of generating income and developing a source of livelihood.
This call was made when Compassion Ghana, a child advocacy NGO on Saturday, October 9, 2021, held the finals of its Entrepreneurship Project.
The project saw 50 compassion beneficiaries going through a business pitching contest between May and October this year.
The participants divided into groups after generating their business ideas, were taken through a five day bootcamp with the help of some accomplished entrepreneurs who served as their coaches.
The finals of the contest held on Saturday had various groups presenting their refined business ideas to a panel of judges for funding.
The Chairman of the Implementing Committee for the Compassion Entrepreneurship Project (CEP), Bano Oko Tackie, noted that the essence of the competition was to serve as a platform to inculcate entrepreneurship passion into the participants.
“The idea is to inculcate into the beneficiaries of Compassion entrepreneurial ideas and skills, and also bring onboard those who have the idea and skills to help us develop those ideas. We acknowledge that in a post Covid world, entrepreneurship is the way to go.
“All our participants are tertiary students and we believe that in addition to your academics, you could still generate funds on campus and after school, you still have the opportunity to develop your idea without necessarily going after companies looking for employment,” he stated.
At the end, three of the groups emerged first, second and third in the competition and were awarded with gold, silver and bronze medals respectively. The team members of the first three teams were also presented with certificates and cash prize.
The three leading companies were; Gresec, which aims at producing powdered eggs to help students among other egg consumers from incurring extra cost, BS Buildings, a company producing building blocks from plastic waste and Vecas Foods, a food and beverage company that produces instant and convenient food for consumption with high attention paid to hygiene.
According to Mr Tackie, the winning teams aside the prizes would be guided by the NGO in securing funding for their businesses.
“We are looking at the best out of them. We would have to write a proposal, get funding to start up that idea. Each of them is representing a company to us and whichever company wins, we would have to go look for funding and help them start up their company,” he stated.
Emphasizing the importance of entrepreneurship, the Planning Committee Chairman encouraged youths across the country to take up entrepreneurship.
“We want to encourage every youth in Ghana that regardless of the programme that you are reading in school, you should still take up an entrepreneurial opportunity,” he said.