Talking to The Standard on the sidelines, Pa Modou Jallow, coordinator, Project Light House Gambia (PLG), said: “We are holding this training programme to sensitise and capacitise the youth and women that are working with us, Project Light House Gambia (PLG). We are of the belief that reaching out to the youth and women folks who form the majority in the country is the best way to eradicate poverty. It is the young people who will inherit this country from today’s leaders and they must be equipped enough to ensure that they could handle those responsibilities with which the task of nation building comes. This is why we are working with National Enterprise Development Initiative (NEDI).
“We want the youth to understand that success in entrepreneurship knows no location and that you can be a millionaire wherever you are. The youth in this country can be made to understand that they can be very productive- they can be the solutions without waiting for the government or travel to Europe through the back-way. Governments are there to guide the citizens and never will you find a country where a particular is able to put every youth to work and The Gambia cannot be an exception. Even the Europeans with all their factories have recently started crying over youth unemployment- so there is no easy way anywhere.”
Mustapha Badjie, Programme Manager, NEDI, added: “Having a productive youth and women population in the country is something that should occupy everyone’s mind because if 60% of our population is left idling, then the future of the country is bleak. That is why NEDI finds it necessary to support all initiatives geared towards introducing the youth and women folks to entrepreneurship.
“The youth and women need to be helped because they are the driving force of our economy. The women for example control the greater percentage of the small, medium enterprises in the country. Therefore, if we want to develop the economy, we have to target their entrepreneurship base of the economy dominated by women and to some extent, the youth.”
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