Cotton Tree Foundation (CTF) and Evangelical Fellowship Sierra Leone (EFSL) together with their Dutch funding partner Woord en Daad on Friday launched the Job Booster Project at the REAPS Vocational Training Institute at AJ Momoh Street, Freetown. Launching the project, the Director in the Ministry of Technical and Tertiary Education and Deputy Director of TVET, Abdul A. Sennesi, said what the two organisations are doing is important to improving the lives of Sierra Leoneans as they have taken the cause to develop technical and vocational skills in the country.
“We are here today because CTF and EFSL are doing their job to make Sierra Leone a better place. Donor countries are tired of supporting us with aid and they are now turning to organisations like these to help bring development and stability from within. No country will develop from the outside because the country will never be self-sufficient or economically viable.” He said the decision to use internal orgnisations to help the country from within is right and called on other organisations to do the same by training Sierra Leoneans on technical skills to help them produce for the society.
“Today CTF and EFSL have started and we at the ministry are happy and will support them. We are hoping that other institutions will do the same to help develop the country because today the food we eat, the clothes we wear and transport are all from TVET skills. So developing the middle manpower is what we need in Sierra Leone now.” EFSL CEO Dr Jonathan Williams expressed happiness that the two years spent working on the project has come to fruition, after its success in Burkina Faso.
He said they have been working with sponsor Dutch Woord en Daad to train and get Sierra Leoneans out of poverty. “It was not easy for us but today we have arrived, we have been working round the clock with CTF and we can now say we are proud that the project has materialized, and we will start with the hairdressers. It is the pilot phase and these teams of hairdressers will have to make or break the project, but we believe that the enthusiasm they have shown will definitely make this project a success.”
Joan Kamara, CTF CEO, said she is excited to partner with EFSL in the Job Booster Project during COVID’s negative impact on jobs. “We want to reduce unemployment in Sierra Leone as it is very high and not helping the government to succeed. The more jobs created the more stable and rich the government will be. Most of those that are unemployed are between the ages of 19 and 35 years. Even with all their certificates and university education they still find it difficult to get jobs, because the jobs that are available in the market differ from what they have learnt.”
For this reason, she said they will work with educational institutions to train and prepare Sierra Leoneans for the right jobs on offer so thousands of lives will be changed through businesses that will address the current situations in the country. Presenting the Job Booster Project, Team Lead Mariama Khai Fornah said their long-term vision includes providing 500,000 young people with decent, gainful, waged and sustainable (self) employment.
“Our mission is driven by the provision of competitive employment services to businesses and unwillingly unemployed and trainable young people. This we seek to achieve through matching the right type of employees to businesses that need capable employees. These include skilled and unskilled, waged or self-employed. In the next five years, we see ourselves among the preferred employment broker agencies in the country.” She said Job Booster SL was established to contribute to the improvement of (self) employment of youths in Sierra Leone, adding the consortium will also help trainable unemployed youths gain decent jobs that will help them become self-reliant.
By Mohamed J. Bah