A four day business training workshop organised by BE REEL has today ended in Gunjur.
The workshop saw 30 participants from across Gunjur and satellite settlements trained on business skills to start or expand their businesses. The training was conducted by founders Dr Nikki Swan and Dr Trevor Long both with extensive knowledge and experience.
The workshop which ran from November 24th - 28th, 2019 at the Gunjur Project, trained participants on business and leadership.
Omar Saho and Mustapha Darboe, both employees of The Gunjur Project attended and completed the business training programs. Omar and Mustapha have been working at Gunjur Project for 10 years. Gunjur Project is absolutely proud of the duo about how hard they have worked over the years and hope that the new skills will help them deliver a good service to all that visit the project, remarked Gunjur Project.
Other workshops organised in Gunjur by BE REEL ran from January 21st - 25th, 2019, July 2018 and March 2018.
The closing ceremony was attended by the U.K. High Commissioner to The Gambia, Sharon Wardle, Chief of Kombo South, Lamin Darboe, Imam of Gunjur and the Alikalo of Gunjur. The Alikalo of Kajabang village was also in attendance, as well as a representative from the Brikama Area Council. Certificates were presented to course participants.
Commenting on the success of series of business trainings that were conducted in Gunjur in which a participant now runs a small printing business, BE REEL had this to say:
“Lamin 'Suka' was also on the first pilot programme. He is a teacher and saw an opportunity to set up doing printing and photocopying in the village. No one else was doing this at the time. He had a very small shop in the marketplace and also did barbing in there at the same time. After the training he got a second shop (just over the market place from the first shop) and now does the photocopying and printing in the larger shop and barbing in the first shop. The two businesses are run as separate entities. When we went back for the third workshop Suka had expanded his printing to include a new machine that prints pictures etc onto T-shirts. Again a first for Gunjur. Have a look at some of the great shirts he has printed up for different people... Keep it up Suka.”
BE REEL (Building Empowerment: Rural Economic Engagement in Life) is a UK registered charity working in The Gambia that looks to help build the economies from the ground up. “Whilst we are a small charity, strategically we hope to contribute to a reduction in multidimensional poverty through independent means, to reduce the temptation for young men and women to emigrate to seek wealth in Europe and to establish long term sustainable development, especially for rural communities.”