The last intake of participants for this year’s Youth@Work 0Young Entrepreneurship Program (YEP) has graduated on Friday after a two-week intensive training on starting your own business (SYOB), a course run in tandem with the International Labour Organization (ILO) who have provided extensive TOT to the Youth@Work youth-led staff this year.
The 22 graduates received their certificates after successfully completing the course as the last batch for this year.
Among the graduates were stall holders for this week’s exciting Youth Festival and others who are planning on starting their own businesses.
A young entrepreneur and participant in the training, Philip Rosta, has decided to make use of the skills he gained from the training.
“I see this workshop is very important, it is after I attended this workshop that I have the courage to venture into setting up my own business,” he said.
Rosta is planning to use the micro finance offered through the YEP Programme (in the form of materials) to start a Copra buying business.
Comparing to past trainings facilitated throughout the year, YEP Officer Daniel Vavataga said he is glad to have assisted a good number of young women in this training.
“Many of the young women trained this month have already started and are running their own businesses,” Mr. Vavataga said.
“Youth@Work is here to support them to help them to sustain their businesses and have the tools to make right decisions and choices and to employ savings, planning and marketing techniques to help ensure success.”
“About ¾ of the total participants are women, and it’s a good thing to note, as a society that upholds male dominance the initiative taken by these women shows independence.”
The program has achieved its goal for the year, with three trainings in SYOB being conducted for a hundred participants.
Tanya Bethel is a YEP participant in group three this year who runs her own catering business and managed to sustain it due to the help of the Program.
“Learning bookkeeping and pricing in the training has helped me to keep my catering business going well,” Tanya said.
With the same mission as the Internship Program, the Young Entrepreneurship program (YEP) aims to assist Young entrepreneurs to get on to a career path, in this case through starting new businesses for self-employment by upgrading youth business knowledge.
