By AMINATEH NKEMNGU
Within the framework of a memorandum of understanding recently reached between the Ministry of Secondary Education and Amom Charity, a Bamenda-based organization, entrepreneurship skills will soon be introduced and taught in secondary schools.
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 an 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 who enrolled will likely complete secondary school, indicating that 35.7 per-cent of children enrolled in school drop out early.
Most programmes, 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 every-one. Statistics point to a 30 percent unemployment rate. 75.8 percent underemployment and 48 percent of the population below poverty line.
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 Ibr 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.
According to the memorandum of understanding, the Ministry of Secondary Education will introduce entrepreneurial skills in the curriculum in secondary schools. carry out training of trainers, teach employability skills to students, assist graduates for job creation and small sized enterprises, facilitate the imple-mentation of the. project in schools and approve centers for the programme.
In the past six years, Amom Charity has carried out projects such as providing textbooks and other related school equipment to 60 nursery schools, 115 primary schools and 15 second-ary schools. The programmes impacted the lives of 2554 kids in nursery schools, 14,109 pupils in primary schools and 3,249 students in secondary school.
Originally Reported by The Sun Cameroon (Mon. Feb. 04, 2013)
