LEA emphasises importance of SMEs
Pauline Dikuelo | Wednesday December 10, 2014 14:36
He was speaking during the Entrepreneurship Awareness Workshop at Camp Hill yesterday. When addressing the participants, Mokalake said after being approached by Motse Wa Badiri Training Centre last year with the idea of collaborating and undertaking a business creation workshop for people with disabilities, they embraced it as a noble idea.
“It provided LEA with an opportunity to gauge its programmes in so far as taking people with disabilities on board in entrepreneurship and at the same time determining how much needs to be done in embracing people with disabilities within the entrepreneurship fraternity.”
He further urged them to take this rare opportunity with seriousness and look within to find out whether they have what it takes to become entrepreneurs and encouraged those who do not have what it takes not to despair as they can be developed. “Just view yourself as not static but a developing being”
Mokalake further challenged them to come up with a game plan based on the valuable information which will be shared and use it towards the future.
On his part the Camphill Director Andreas Groth embraced this opportunity saying that this will help their students have a sustainable future, as they will join the community with business minds, which will help them to be independent.
“People with disabilities need all the support from parents and the community that they live in, for them to believe in themselves and make a difference.”
He added that over the past years they have realised that when these students leave Motse wa Badiri to join the community, where they is no support they is almost no chance of them achieving what they have been trained.
The workshop, which will run for two days, seeks to develop entrepreneurial interest of the participants so that they can view entrepreneurship as an alternative to formal employment. It also seeks to equip them with basic knowledge on how to identify business opportunities and how to start, run a business within the Botswana Business environment.
Entrepreneurship Awareness Workshop is currently rolled out to 32 senior schools, various government tertiary education schools, brigades, technical colleges as well as university student to further equip them with entrepreneurship skills and various support programmes available to them through various government departments.