Another 40 persons drawn from Region Four, are now equipped to startup or grow their respective businesses, after completing training programme under the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security’s Garment and Accessories Cottage Industry initiative.
The participants received their certificates on Friday at the National Cultural Centre, after completing the five weeks of intense training in areas such as; business literacy and micro-enterprise. The training also covered topics such as, gender-based and domestic violence, depression and suicide, conflict resolution and mediation, anger management, the law, and knowing your rights.
Delivering remarks at the graduation ceremony, Minister of Human Service and Social Security, Dr Vindhya Persaud said she is extremely proud of the participants and what they have accomplished thus far.
“The journey has been an eventful one, but I’m happy that you had the faith to be part of an initiative that will spiral out into many more…This means that you are interested in becoming accomplished and ambassadors of an initiative that will propel you to success and greater heights and more importantly, finding within yourselves, resourcefulness, resilience and making a difference in a very positive way,” Minister Persaud told the graduates.
The initial stages of the pilot project saw persons producing close to 200,000 facemasks that was distributed to students returning to school throughout country. This was followed by the business literacy training.
Minister Persaud explained that the programme’s overarching goal is to assist the participants in building their individual skills that will allow them to become independent and make meaningful contributions to society.
“This initiative would have taken you to a point where you have a skill and now you’ve honed that skill and now your thinking of how to use that skills beyond making a facemask to take it to other levels. More importantly, I saw a niche, what was needed and that niche has spiral on to something that you can use to create your own niche market.”
Coming out of this initiative, Minister Persaud announced that the Guyana Women’s Leadership Institute (GWLI) will be a hub for training programmes in many areas. GWLI will also be helping persons find markets and improve their products. (Ministry of Human Services and Social Security)
