The Ministry Secondary of Education and Amom Charity, a Bamenda based Nongovernmental Organization have signed a memorandum of understand-ing to train some 28,500 students in 285 colleges on entrepreneurial skills.
The project known as Be School for Cameroon Schools will teach each student an entrepreneurial skill from building relationships to making a business plan.
This will encourage Cameroon’s poorest children to stay in school to learn skills that will help them get a job or create one when they complete school.
Amom Charity and another organization known as Going To School will train 570 government teachers from 285 government schools in the North-West Region to use “Be Skill” stories and complete the activity with 28,500 children.
The children will read books which will promote literacy and skills in education. According to the Director of Amom Charity, Afowiri Kizito Fondzenyuy, “school education in Cameroon is currently not relevant to getting or creating a job. About 84.6 percent enroll in secondary school, 64.3 percent of children enrolled will likely complete secondary school, indicating that 35.7 percent of children enrolled in school drop out early”
Most programs he said focus on primary education and early childhood care; the missing middle is “youth” and interventions in High School.
Furthermore, skills are usually taught at age 18 and above when kids have already dropped out of school early.
“Thus teaching skills earlier to kids while they are in school through dynamic content can keep kids in school to learn more. Employability skills are not yet taught at scale to young people aged 10 to 16 years”
He further explained that while the economy is growing, It cannot create jobs for everyone .Statistics point to 30 percent unemployment rate, 75.8 percent underemployment and 48 percent of the population below poverty line. At the same time. Cameroon faces problems of water, waste, energy, housing and sanitation further exacer-bated by a growing population.
One solution to unemployment and solving social problems is mass entrepreneurship. Young people need to be taught employability skills in school to be able to get a job or create one immediately after they have completed their education.
The project is designed as an intervention to reach young people in schools with employability and entrepreneurial content to encourage them to stay in school .
A link will be created between education and employability and therefore increase value for the education received.
An estimated 28,500 children will read one “Be Story” once a week, learning an entrepreneurship skill. They would apply this theoretical knowledge as well as stay in school to learn content relevant to employment.
