On January 16th and 17th, Develop Africa continued its commitment to human resource development by taking another step forward in providing training and seed money for micro enterprise in Sierra Leone. 

The initial recipients are primarily families of children who are recipients of Develop Africa’s Promise of Hope Scholarship.  Evaluation of the impact of the scholarship scheme on the beneficiaries revealed that there was a need to support parents/guardians with microfinance for income-generating activities in order to meet additional needs of the sponsored children to enable them to stay in school and achieve quality education. 

In this vein, Develop Africa has provided an interest-free revolving loan to parents/guardians of scholarship beneficiaries to carry out micro enterprises. Recipients of this loan will repay the total amount received within twelve (12) months from the date of receipt of the loan. Ten parents/guardians benefited from the loan. Two-day training was conducted on business management and basic book keeping for the loan recipients. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between the grant recipients and Develop Africa spelling out the duties and responsibilities of each party.

Highlights of the training Content
  
1. Entrepreneurial competencies (Risk-taking, Persistence, Commitment to the Work Contract, Information Seeking, Goal Setting, Systematic Planning and monitoring, Persuasion and Networking, Independence and Self Confidence)
 
2. Analyzing the business venture and setting parameters to implement the business 
 
3. Business management skills
 
4. Basic bookkeeping. 
 

View Sierra Leonean online newspaper article on this session ::: In the event that the article is no longer available online, here is PDF copy of the article

      
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