PROBONO, an organisation from Germany, in collaboration with Action for Justice in Society (AJISO) have launched a special program dubbed PROBONO Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) that aims at equipping secondary school students and teachers with entrepreneurship skills.
Speaking while launching the Program in Moshi, the National Economic Empowerment Council of Tanzania (NEEC) Executive Secretary Dr Beng’i Issa lauded PROBONO for funding the project and AJISO for locally coordinating it to ensure it reaches the targeted audience.
She was addressing participants of a two day training workshop who include teachers who are expected to train the targeted students.
According to Dr Beng`i, the project has targeted the right group as the students will grasp entrepreneurship skills at an early stage and cater for some of their needs while still in school.
“It is important to start making these youths believe that they can employ themselves and make it in life rather than studying so they can be employed,” she said and stressed that many youths give up when they do not get employment when they could actually employ themselves right from secondary school and develop further as they grow.
She said the Government will continue supporting such initiatives by NGOs to promote entrepreneurship among the youth.
The PROBONO Country Director, Eliet Senkoro said they will use the program to keep track of students who will undergo the training to find out what they become afterwards.
“We want to know what their goals are so we can guide them and also keep track of their development even after school,” he said adding that PEP objectives include improving professional perspectives and chances of the Tanzanian youth, focused on implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), changing the mind-set: Sustainable self-employment should become a real career option for the Tanzanian youth and enhancing key-competences and soft skills (as self-initiative, confidence, sense of responsibility and teamwork) of students which are essential for their professional career.
The AJISO Executive Director, Virginia Silayo thanked PROBONO for it’s support and said the students will learn valuable business skills which will provide them with a real-life experience and also generate an extra income for their schools, gain self-confidence and believe in themselves to venture in their own business and to develop the appropriate attitude “yes, I can do it!”
“This is a three year training program for teachers and students at 12 PROBONO partner schools together with PEP cooperation partners who include the National Economic Empowerment Council of Tanzania (NEEC), Teach a man to fish (TAMTF) an NGO from Uganda, Action for Justice in Society (AJISO,” she said.
The launch was attended by several other stakeholders other stakeholders and partners including Regional Economic Empowerment Coordinators from Arusha and Dar es Salaam, Regional Education Officers and District Economic Empowerment Officers from 12 Districts.
