“Go Green” begins 3-day seminar

Go Green Event, an empowerment group, has begun a three-day training workshop in Paynesville, outside Monrovia. The Acting Chief of Party of Building Markets, Daniel Levy said, the purpose of the workshop is to strengthen Liberia’s human resource capacity in the area of Small-Medium Enterprises or SMEs.

Speaking with reporters on Monday, August, 29, at the start of the seminar ongoing in the Paynesville Town Hall in Paynesville, he said Go Green, an annual event, is part of a sustainable markets place initiative in Liberia funded by the United States Aids for International Development or USAID. He added that basically, the initiative has lasted far for five years.

According to Mr. Levy, the significant of the program is to design and support small and medium seize enterprises and help Liberian entrepreneurs – business men and women, not only to sustain their businesses, but allow those businesses to grow positively and become sustainable.

He disclosed that the dream is actually not his own, but came from Building Markets and has spread across the world with great success and fantastic interest. Mr. Levy detailed that in sustaining successful Building Markets, the organization has received US$75m from international partners and some of the money has gone to local businesses, particularly those owned by Liberians.

He named some entities that have benefited from the initiative in Liberia as Sharpe and the Frontpost located at the United States Embassy near Monrovia, among others and added that shortly, they will start collaborating with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to ensure a smooth operation.

At the same time the Acting Chief of Party of Building Markets further disclosed plan to hold a conference on women’s participation in the program during which successful entrepreneurs will tell their stories.

“Right now the organization is not giving monies to any individual, who may join the process, but what the entity does is to help train Liberians in human resource capacity building so as to enable them carry on their own business affairs,” he noted.

The Acting Chief of Party emphasized that they have come to give Liberian entrepreneurs knowledge, which is a form of empowerment toward human development. He said after Building Markets shall have completed its training in Liberia, it will leave and the beneficiaries will take over the mantle by continuing the same operation toward SMEs.

The objective is to spread the initiative throughout the 15 counties to help train youth graduating from high school and even those from colleges and universities to have brilliant ideas that would help them to contribute to the society, according to him.

Also speaking, the Training Manager of Building Markets Mrs Kula Thompson Williams, indicated that Go Green Event is a pretty global concept and was launched in Liberia in 2013 for the first time, which brought together China Union and other concessionaires.

She asserted that since the establishment of the organization here, it has trained over 2000 individuals across Liberia and some beneficiaries of the training have always called her to narrate their success stories about the exercise.

Mrs Williams said the organization trains Liberians to enable them become marketable in society, and at the same time add value to the knowledge they have acquired. Day one of the training brought together several stakeholders, including international donors and local officials.

By Zee Roberts-Editing by Jonathan Browne