MADAM-SL Commences Training of 236 Women in Entrepreneurship

By Martinet Sesay

The Mankind’s Activities for Development Accreditation Movement-Sierra Leone (MADAM-SL) on Tuesday 28^th March 2017 commenced a ten day training of two hundred and thirty six (236) women in financial education and Business development under the project “Women Economic Empowerment and Business Development (WEBD)”

The first phase of the training which took place at the Mabonkani Community in SafrokoLimba Chiefdom attracted thirty seven participants. The training which was meant to create the platform for APEX Bank to raise awareness among the beneficiaries on their banking procedures and processes wasfacilitated by a representative from the Apex Bank.

According to the livelihood Officer of MADAM, Mohamed Koroma, the training would be replicated` in the seven other chiefdoms including, MakariGbanti, Lebisigahun, KonikaySanda, and Masingbi among others in Bombali and Tonkolili.  He said the objective of the refresher training was to among other things give beneficiaries the leverage to share common entrepreneurship challenges and to find possible solutions to solving them. The training would also enable beneficiaries to get a clear understanding of the LCF.

Mohamed explained that in 2015, MADAM-SL through support from CARE-SL launched the WEBD with aim of identifying and capacitating woman entrepreneurs at community levels. After an intensive training in designing smart business plans, participants were asked to develop business plans that if successful will be funded. About one hundred business plans were put forward including eighty four individual plans and sixteen groups. When the plans were sent to donors in the Netherlands, twenty five from the lot were accepted for funding.

He maintained that the training therefore was meant to further enhance the skills and knowledge of beneficiaries on how to improve their financial education and also to increase beneficiaries’ business management skills in line with the Lasting Change Fund (LCF).

“In other words to capacitate beneficiaries in order for them to effectively and efficiently manage the Lasting Change Fund (seed capital), a training of this nature has been organized for such beneficiaries. The training will give them a clear understanding on the use and management of the LCF (seed capital) in order to be able to control and to manage their businesses in line with their business plans thereby becoming better entrepreneurs.” Mohamed noted

According to Mohamed, the importance and timeliness of this project could not be overemphasized as it would improve the financial strength and livelihood standards of the beneficiaries and their families as whole. He cautioned that beneficiaries should make the best out of what he described as ‘opportunity’ accorded them so that more people will stand to benefit noting that that is why the project is meant to revolve and opportunity extended to others. 

On his part, the Project Officer for the WEBD Project who works for CARE-SL; Muhammad SahrKomba said CARE-SL does not directly implement projects but could only do so through partners. This is how he said they were able to identify MADAM-SL to implement the WEBD Project. He dilated on the stages through which the project had gone, stressing that “based on the successes we made through the Village Savings and Loan initiative introduced in the targeted communities, we have been able to transform it into an entrepreneurship project with more benefit accorded to beneficiaries”. He disclosed

A beneficiary of the refreshers’ training; Aminata A. Conteh lauded MADAM-SL and CARE-SL for what she described as their human-face approach to addressing their challenges in the communities, she said they were bit sceptical initially when MADAM-SL introduced the box saving system to them. But after a year, they developed interest in the project based on the outcome and immediate economic transformation benefit they got. She promised that they will handle the project, as she put it, like an egg and that they will own it so that more communities will benefit.

The same cluster training is presently taking place in the other chiefdoms named above.