Strengthening the ecosystem for women entrepreneurship in Tamale, Ghana

By Tunde Ogunje

My field placement is with the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Center (NORSAAC), a local NGO in Ghana operating from Tamale in the northern region of the country. I worked with the independent subsidiary of Norsaac called Youth Social Services Organisation (NiV) managing all the sustainable livelihood and social enterprise projects of Norsaac, with other three staff of NiV in a team.

The Projects:

In all, there were three projects we started and which we are still working on. After the orientation and initial meetings with NiV team, we concluded that the short time I had would be well spent if we could focus on advising on the mechanism to upscale and existing revolving fund.  Then, opportunity came for us to respond to an expression of interest (EoI). So, we submitted a grant proposal for a project we called YEESS - Youth Entrepreneurship Education for Secondary Schools. Towards the tail end of the in-person part of the placement, the need arose for us to develop the framework for a strategic plan for the newly built training centre as a potential source of additional revenue for NiV.

In addition to these three main projects, I also facilitated some sessions in the training for potential young, female social entrepreneurs in a project that Norsaac and NiV are managing for Youth Challenge International (YCI), called HerStart. YCI is funded by Global Affairs Canada

My role:

Ukasha Mohammed is the Chief Executive Officer of NiV and works along side both Salim Mohammed and Harriet Anafo. Majorly, I worked more like an advisor or a consultant. While we were all working on these three projects as a team, I was leading the development of ideas, developing the concept papers, creating shared drive using google drive for team members to make real-time inputs, calling for meetings to brainstorm on the ideas and concepts, and making presentations where necessary.