BTCA-Kenema Certificates Endorse Employability: A Success Story

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 In BTCA, News

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To many BTCA-Kenema trainees, it was a lifetime experience on that much-awaited day when the resonant sounds from the microphone announced their names to approach the platform for the first time. To the amazement of family members, the panel of authorities including Mr. David Woollcombe (BTCA Network Coordinator) handed them the glimmering certificates and the cameras went fluttering all the time. The Holy Trinity Hall at Kenema indeed rocked with applause at each conferment and the heroines blissfully returned home.

Certificates are meant to bring with them that much needed job and self-accomplishment. In Sierra Leone and across the continent, the high rate of youth unemployment bemoans every effort at certifications because many more of these precious documents lay picking dust in home drawers or have cockroaches nibbling away at them in portmanteaux tucked beneath solitary beds.

For Kadijatou Barrie (photo above) and Ann Marie Vandy, two of the recent beneficiaries of BTCA-Kenema trainings, their BTCA-Kenema certificates have brought a dynamic twist of fate in their challenging lives. From secondary school graduates, this duo kicked the dust around with many other peers until BTCA-Kenema came along to empower them in business management skills, entrepreneurship and startup funds. Coming into the BTCA-Kenema office at 10 Ngegbai Street a couple of weeks ago, our proud beneficiaries ecstatically announced their newfound gains and lauded BTCA-Kenema trainings for it all. Now gainfully employed with the National Insurance Company, Kadijatou Barrie was thankful for benefitting from the cost-free BTCA-Kenema trainings which laid a solid foundation for her to finally clinch that job. Mrs. Ann Marie Vandy too is now an employee of Sierratel, the national telecom services at Kenema. She opined, ‘It was a good undertaking, the training, despite pressures at home and peer group influence dissuading many of us as a waste of energy and time. But it worked after all and I am now a symbol of perseverance in the face of adversity. Bravo to BTCA-Kenema and live on to bring changes in the lives of so many other needy community women.’’

And without doubt BTCA-Kenema has to live on to add value to the lives of our underserved youth through cost-free business management skills enhancement, entrepreneurship and start-up funds to embark on a business of their choice.

Contributed by Hinga Demby, BTCA-Kenema Co-Director.


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