Junior Achievement organises “You can B” contest for schools

JUNIOR Achievement (JA), an organisation dedicated to educating students on workforce readiness and entrepreneurship, has organised a competition dubbed, "You can B- from Inspiration to Entrepreneurship" for selected senior high school (SHS) students from five regions in the country.
The students were drawn from more than 20 SHSs in the Greater Accra, Eastern, Central, Volta and Western regions of Ghana.
The competition, which was sponsored by Barclays Bank Ghana Limited, will inspire entrepreneurial thinking and instil the spirit of innovation in the students.
The £1.5 million project is expected to run for 12-16 weeks and would benefit over 8,000 students in Ghana and other parts of Africa.
The Executive Director of JA, Mr Jeff Agbai, said the competition would help prepare young people for the real world by showing them how to generate wealth and effectively manage it.
"It would improve the interpersonal as well as the problem-solving skills of the students to enable them learn to work under very tight deadlines," he said.
He said the students would be able to foster understanding of the world and a spirit of entrepreneurship through the principle of learning by doing.
Mr Agbai said the event would enable the students to put those lessons they had learnt into action and contribute their quota to the development of communities in which they lived.
The Managing Director of Barclays Bank, Mr Benjamin Dabrah, said developing the youth was important to the sustainabilty of any business today.
They will learn how to interact appropriately with colleagues, learn how to formulate and achieve their career goals and appreciate the importance of presenting themselves in a professional manner,” he noted.
Barclays Bank employees did an on-site career monitoring to ensure that the students really understood the task they were undertaking.
At the end of the competition, students from the SOS Herman Gmeiner College at Tema, emerged winners. They received an Excellence Award.
Students from Pope John SHS came second, and for their prize, they took awy the Chairman's Award.
Students from Aburi Girls SHS, who placed third, were given the Junior Achievement Award.
Other participating schools were Mfantsiman Girls SHS, Adisadel College SHS, St Peters SHS, Mawuli SHS, Bishop Herman SHS, Osu Saleem SHS, St Augustine’s College, Keta SHS, Wesley Grammar SHS and Mfantsipim School.