Coalition for Positive Impact (CPI) in partnership with the Youth Parliament of SDD UBIDS has held a Career Fair for final-year students of the SDD University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD UBIDS) to prepare the students for after-school life.

The career fair theme “Empowering Final Year Students on an Exit Plan” took the would-be graduates through interactive sessions on scholarship options, job and corporate skills, and entrepreneurial skills for starters, over the weekend.

Speaking at the sidelines of the fair, Senior Lecturer and patron of the Youth Parliament, SDD UBIDS, Dr Adams Abdulai said the event came in handy at a time when there were limited job opportunities and graduate unemployment was on the rise.

He added that resources were dwindling while family sizes were increasing which necessitated that students and graduates be empowered to leverage available opportunities to further their education and better their lives.

“Very often, we know that not all students would end at the first-degree level, some certainly will go beyond that."

“[But] Resources are dwindling, families are increasing, responsibility levels are high and for that matter, there is the need for them to have basic skills and knowledge on the sources of funding so that they can take advantage of the scholarship windows and then make necessary applications to get funding support for further studies,” he explained.

Dr. Abdulai, who walked the students through scholarship options and job search sessions, said that it was imperative for students to be equipped with relevant job-seeking and entrepreneurial skills in the wake of job scarcity and frozen public sector employment following Ghana’s IMF-World Bank engagement.

“So we tried to walk them through how to prepare a winnable CV, how to develop a catchy application letter … and how to embrace themselves for job interviews,” he noted.

Mr. Isam Nuhu, the Director of Operations of CPI, addressing the scores of students at the fair, said the career fair fell in line with the CPI’s goal of empowering young people to become effective leaders and entrepreneurs, hence its sponsorship of the event.

“Over the years, CPI has brought together over 1,500 young people to a common platform to discuss ways by which they can grow into effective entrepreneurs and leaders,” he said.

He indicated that the CPI, through its annual Igniting Dreams Summit, has invested over GHc100,000 in supporting young entrepreneurs to scale up their startups through competitive tendering processes.

He encouraged the students to build effective networks and relations and stay updated with industry trends so as to take advantage of available opportunities to build their businesses and gain competitive employment.

Mr. Abdul Hamid Adams, the CEO of Tondaar Ventures, a social enterprise that works with rural women in the shea processing industry, took the students through sessions on self-analysis, idea generation, business operations and growth, and challenges and prospects in the entrepreneurial space.

He noted that it was common knowledge that the government cannot employ the many young people graduating from both public and private universities yearly, hence the need for young people to explore the field of entrepreneurship.

“This program was very interactive, it was very educative and I am very happy to have been part of it…we will also go to join them in the entrepreneurial industry and other sectors of the economy for us to make Ghana the country we all wanted it to become,” a participant said.