About 50 vulnerable 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 50 beneficiaries who each received US$ 200 as startup capital were intensively trained on how to start and 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 startup capital is intended to help vulnerable members of our society as a means of empowerment.
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 startup capital to start your businesses thereby practicalizing the knowledge acquired,” he said.
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 multi-sectorial and inter-connected challenges of human insecurities particularly food, social, and economic issues for the most vulnerable and neglected populations of the North-Central region of Liberia at the community level.”
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 approach.
The International Labor Organization Country Coordinator said the program is targeting 150 vulnerable community members to benefit from entrepreneurial skills training on how to start and manage their businesses while 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 step-down training is to build the entrepreneurial capacity of 150 vulnerable 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 more and better employment.
The Bong County (Botota and Forqulleh) component of the training runs from February27, 2023 to March 9, 2023.
The participants who learned business management skills are expected to start their various businesses in their communities. Allousious Kollie, a beneficiary, said he will used 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,” he expressed.
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.
It is expected to take place in all six project communities in Nimba, Lofa, and Bong Counties.
