ABE, a not-for-profit skills development specialist and Ofqual-regulated awarding organization, has launched the ABE Club to empower senior high school students towards business creation.
The launch took place last Friday, September 13, 2024, in front of a crowd of students from various senior high schools within the Greater Accra Region.
Addressing a gathering of students from selected schools in the Greater Accra Region, Mrs. Kereesa Carrington-Nunez, the Director of Sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbeans, and the Americas for ABE, bemoaned the lack of commercialization of skills and talents among the youth.
Underscoring the need for youth to view their God-given inborn abilities as a tool for financial transformation, she urged the monetization of these abilities.
Given that the country lacks an entrepreneurial mindset amidst the abundance of knowledge, she called for a paradigm shift.
Rather than focusing on how to gain jobs, she entreated the youth to sharpen their entrepreneurial mindset for greater gains.
Touching on the decision by many to leave Ghana, the director attributed the move to a misunderstanding of the values possessed by the youth in building strong businesses.
“They want to leave because they don’t understand the value of what they have. Understanding both value and business is critical.
“They want to leave because they have not been trained to spot values; they want to leave because they think there’s no job but no one is focusing on creating jobs or building enterprises, and I am surprised because we have vast land, oil, gold, and exporters of cashew with so many economic values here,” she said.
The launch of the ABE Club will introduce students to entrepreneurial skills, to create business incubators to assist in identifying sources of funding and actualizing their ideas.
Additionally, the club aims to expose students to the fundamentals of pursuing higher education, while also grooming others to build sustainable partnerships, to add value both at home and in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Members of the ABE Club will receive massive discounts to study in the UK based on their qualifications, as well as huge opportunities.
On his part, Mr. Isaac Yeboah, the Country Manager, emphasized that the ABE offers quality practical training desirous of industry, making their students industry-ready.
He explained that having a qualification that would not offer any job can render the possessor unemployed.
He explained that the government’s effort to upgrade entrepreneurial skills has strategically aligned the ABE Club training.
Beyond the entrepreneurial skills training enrolled by the government, the canker of unemployment persists.
He added that the youth have not been groomed from scratch, which explains why the ABE has chosen that path to help them establish their businesses.
According to him, the launch means there has been a partnership with the government to alleviate unemployment among youth, especially after school.
He went on to say that the club had opened its doors to all students, not just business-oriented students.
He appealed to the government to strongly support such an initiative to help create employment avenues for the teeming youth.
Ghana | Atinkaonline.com
