ILO Delivers Skills and Capital for Small Businesses in Bong County
By: Anthony Gray bishopgrayjranthony@gmail.com
Forquelleh, Bong County: Fifty (50) Liberians in rural Bong County , have received startup capital from the International Labor Organization (ILO), through the Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) Project.
The participants received intensive training to improve their businesses in Botota and Forqulleh, Bong County respectively.
Speaking to participants during the training in Forqulleh, ILO Country Coordinator in Liberia Salif Massally said the new skills and financing will propel the cohort of businesses to empowerment and growth.
Mr. Massally said while it is important to provide them with the needed skills to run a successful business, it is more important to give them the resources as empowerment to start their businesses or invest in their already established businesses.
“It would have been a waste of knowledge to just train you, people with the skills on business management and let you go; so we saw it important that after the training, we should give you a capital to start your businesses thereby practicalizing the knowledge acquired”.
Each of the fifty participants received two hundred United States Dollars as startup capital.
According to Mr. Massally, the program is a Joint Project “Building Resilience of Youth, Women, and Vulnerable Groups through Social Protection Floor in Liberia using ICT,” which aims to address the complex and inter-connected challenges of human insecurities particularly food; social and economic issues for the population of the North-Central region of Liberia.
The project promotes the concept of human security by implementing such initiative as a model of human security with “protection” and “empowerment” measures as the most appropriate approaches.
The International Labor Organization Country Coordinator said the program is targeting 150 community members to benefit from entrepreneurial skills training on how to start and manage their businesses.
The beneficiaries were selected from six of the project communities (Bahn, Gbanquoi, Botota, Forkelleh, Zorzor, Yealla) in Nimba, Lofa, and Bong Counties respectively.
“The objective of the training is to build the entrepreneurial capacity of 150 community members to start and improves their businesses; styled: Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB). The SIYB is a management training program with a focus on starting and improving small businesses as a strategy for creating employment.”
The Bong County ( Botota and Forqulleh) component of the training runs from 27 February 2023 to March 9, 2023.
The Participants who learned business management skills are expected to start their various businesses in their communities. One of the Participants in Forqulleh called Allousious Kollie said he will use his startup capital to start a Photo studio & a printing press business in Forqulleh.
“My business name will be ‘photo View Enterprise’. I will provide services to the community, printing photos, printing ID cards for institutions including schools, printing and photocopying documents, and a series of related services. These services are lacking in Forqulleh”, a Participant noted.
The ILO – SIYB Project is to ensure increased access to livelihood opportunities for women and young males and females in the targeted Counties for sustainable and inclusive economic and human development.
