Rural women entrepreneurs attend capacity-building workshop
A total of 50 rural women on Tuesday attended a day’s business management training workshop held for rural women entrepreneurs at Jukwa Mfuom in the Hemang Lower Denkyira District of the Central Region to help them to effectively develop and manage their businesses.
The participants undertake mainly palm oil and palm kennel oil production, traditional catering, cassava processing, dress making, hairdressing and local soap making, among other vocations.
The workshop was organized by Rural Women Development and Health Initiative (RUWDHI), a Non-Governmental Organization with funding from African Women Development Fund, an African-wide grant-making foundation under the theme, “Promoting enterprises resources for effective local economic development and sustainable poverty reduction”.
The objective of the workshop is to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities of the rural women in business development skills so that they can manage their small scale businesses on a more sustainable basis.
Opening the workshop, Mr. Kenneth Osei-Karikari, Project Advisor of RUWDHI noted that the workshop was necessitated by the fact that most of the rural women entrepreneurs faced challenges such as access to credit, lack of access to business and marketing information as well as lack of book keeping skills.
He said participants will be taken through topics such as entrepreneurship, management principles, marketing and customer relations, time management, book keeping and working capital management.
Mr Evans Nii Boye, Executive Director of RUWDHI said consequently, eight young women who were Junior and Senior High School leavers will also be trained and given further skills in local soap-making with start up capital to enable them to set up their own businesses.
He was hopeful that these initiatives his outfit was embarking on would help address the unemployment problem among the youth in the District and the Region at large since the projects would be extended to other districts.
He noted that his organization was committed to implementing interventions which would improve the socio-economic well-being of women and their dependants in the rural areas of the Central Region.
Nana Ama Ayensu Saara III, Queenmother of Denkyira state said the workshop was very laudable and advised participants to take it seriously in order to develop themselves as well as their businesses.
She also advised parents to send their children to school and urged the youth to take their education seriously in order to grow into responsible future leaders.
Source: GNA