GhanaThink Foundation has opened the call for applications for a free Komseko Social Entreprise Training Program, run as part of the Daring to Shift program by Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT).
The Komseko Social Entreprise Training Program run by GhanaThink will train youth working on a social entreprise idea, solution, or organization, as well youths who want to improve their understanding and abilities as social entrepreneurs, or passionate about solving societal problems.
As a co-sponsor of the training program, the Digital Opportunity Trust in partnership with the Government of Canada launched its Daring to Shift 4-year project to support 1,200 youth and over 43,000 community members. 70% of them will be young women – in 9 countries to develop digital skills, access digital jobs, and become leaders and social entrepreneurs.
The 9-week hybrid program will provide strategic and specialist advice, through a course that will provide attendant support to aspiring social entrepreneurs and help them establish impactful businesses within their communities and beyond.
It will begin on September 10, and run through December 2022. However, applications are due by August 31, 2022 at 11:59 GMT, and interested youth within the ages of 18-35 can apply via this LINK.
Training & seed funding
For this 2022 program, 100+ budding social entrepreneurs would be beneficiaries, with support to create business models. The training (peer-2-peer and facilitated) would be via various courses, delivered virtually for all, and physically for a cross-section.
A number of the trainees would receive some prototype funding and possible seed funding towards working on their solutions and organizations. Beneficiaries would develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities especially around these core competencies:
- Digital Literacy – Functional use of ICT in a professional context (i.e. for a job)
- Gender Equality – Ability of people to recognise gender perspectives in their work and community, and concentrate on them towards the goal of gender equality
- Entrepreneurship – The ability to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks. It includes key characteristics that should be possessed by a person in order to successfully run a new venture.
- Social Innovation – Human Centered Design Skills (iteration, testing and prototype), Impact Assessment, Pitching and Storytelling
- 21st Century Skills – Skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success in 21st century society – (4Cs) – Creativity, Collaboration, Communication and Critical Thinking
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Beneficiaries would partake in 3 broad courses, with attendant modules:
- Explore: Identify your own interests and abilities in the form of your personal compelling vision for change in your community.
- Impact: Develop facilitation skills in service of delivering community capacity development programs. This learning plan includes a community deployment period.
- Prototype: Turn your compelling vision for change into a social impact idea, and validate your assumptions in your community using a human-centered approach.
Testimonials
The program includes competitive aspects where the top ranked trainees are awarded prizes and other benefits. Some of the past trainees include Simeon Martey of Child Dream Foundation, Ivy Barley of Developers in Vogue, Michael Sedinam Tenu of XCel Packs, Fiifi Boahen of Pervita Social Hub, etc.
“Ivy Barley’s social enterprise, Developers in Vogue emerged as the first place winner in 2017. Developers in Vogue received tremendous support from Komseko and DOT,“ said Esperanza Yakubu, a member of the Komseko Program team
“To date, they have trained a significant number of women in tech. This Social Entreprise program is committed to train another batch of trailblazers in the social enterprise space,”
Cherubim Mawuli Amenyedor was part of the 2017 cohort. In his testimonial about the impact of the program, Cherubim said “Komseko (GYSEP) helped me to validate my idea better because it gave me a lot of visual tools to help me research so much into the idea. I didn’t think I understood extensive research enough before venturing out.”
“It helped validate the business idea of our position. Later after prototyping and testing, you realise that some of the assumptions you made were not true, so it gave us that real time life to test,” he added.
Rudith Wemakor was also part of #GYSEC2017. When asked about #KomsekoImpact, she said:
“GYSEP (Komseko) reshaped the whole idea because we had an idea of putting the girls in school but after GYSEP and learning about design thinking, we thought it wise to do extensive research and collect data from the communities which we could use to refine the solutions to the problems.”
About GhanaThink
The GhanaThink Foundation is a social enterprise that mobilizes and organizes talent for the primary benefit of Ghana. Its vision is to build a critical mass of young patriotic, passionate, positive, proactive, progressive and productive people in Ghana.
“GhanaThink decided to become a social enterprise in 2013, operating like one at least. We would like to see more young people decide to run social entreprises in order to better sustain social impact work and create wealth for more beneficiaries and others in the impact space” said GhanaThink’s Director – Ato Ulzen-Appiah.
The foundation works in the youth empowerment space and run mentoring, networking, volunteering and training programs. GhanaThink’s Komseko trains and supports youth in Ghana in various professional, topical and sectoral skills.
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It began in 2017 through a partnership with the Digital Opportunity Trust. Social entrepreneurs and other participant groups are trained in workshops and mentored, through online courses, etc.
“The enterprise of today, makes money, makes the environment a better place and improves the lives of people. That enterprise is a SOCIAL ENTERPRISE,” said Richmond Anane Elikplim, Komseko program Lead.
“In 2017, we did 20 entrepreneurs, and in 2018, we did 24. This year, we are scaling bigger and looking to do 80 this september. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to learn more eview what we have done in the past. See you in September,” he added.
Source: GhanaThink Foundation
Abeeb Lekan Sodiq is a Managing Editor & Writer at theafricandream.net. He is as well a Graphics Designer and also known as Arakunrin Lekan.
