A one week training workshop on governance and management for board members organized by Financial Service Association Sierra Leone (FSA-SL).has started at the agriculture office IDA along the Kenema Tongo field highway in Kenema City.
Welcoming participants drawn from Kailahun and Kenema districts on behalf of the National Program Coordinator FSA-SL, Mohamed Tejan Kella, the Rural Engineer for Rehabilitation and Community base Poverty Reduction Project Sheku Tejan Kamara thanked participants for travelling from far distances to attend the workshop. He encouraged them to take the workshop seriously as it is very important for the governance and management of the Financial Institutions at community level in the country.
Giving an overview of the workshop the senior facilitator for the training Alex Betts disclosed that the Association is operating in two chiefdoms in the Kenema district and two chiefdoms in the Kailahun district adding that the program is a pilot one to be undertaken in two years. Mr. Betts said the Association started operations in 2007 and will end in September 2009. He maintained that the Financial Service Association is working in collaboration with the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and the Kenya Republic Development Agency.
The program funding, he added, is not on a loan basis but grant to the government of Sierra Leone and the project is targeting Kono, Kenema and Kailahun districts in the east and Koinadugu district in the North. He maintained that the Association has established six Institutions and by April this year it will be undertaking some evaluation exercise to ascertain the program’s viability.
Another Facilitator Agnes Mueni-Monthi also said that the training will enable the board members to move the role and responsibility of the board’s members and the management for proper management of the Institutions in the community bank operations. She added that the training will help them identify some of the challenges that will cause difficulty to the organizations and better management of assets.
She appealed for unity during the discharge of their duties and to positively make use of the knowledge they will gain from the workshop.
ADVERTISEMENT