Agona Swedru, March 18, GNA - The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning in collaboration with the Rural Financial Services Project (RFSP) has organised a three-day capacity building workshop to sharpen the leadership skills of women with accounts with the Nyakrom Rural Bank. The women who operate their own ventures were assisted by the Bank to expand their businesses to reduce poverty. Resource persons and facilitators for workshop, was provided by the Human Environment Provision Organization (HEPO) Rural Enterprise Project Organization, a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) at Agona Swedru. Mr Nicolas Amoah, General Manager of the Bank in an address stated that apart from the facility, the Bank was interested in equipping them to manage their businesses efficiently. The groups were the Osompa, Obasima, Peace and Odonkosuo. He expressed the hope that the training would enable them to increase their profits improve the turnover of the Bank to enable it to extend the facility to more women. Mr Amoah urged the women to take advantage of the facility to expand their businesses to improve their living standards. Ms Sarah Yeboah, Head of the Women In Development (WID) of Nyakrom Rural Bank, said the workshop was to impart techniques to handle issues facing their members. She said that it was also to assess the impact of the programme to see if the women had remained focused to maintain their links with the bank.

Ms Yeboah stated that the Bank would use six months to provide capacity building for the group executives to enable them render quality services to their members. The Head of WID said 1500 women from Agona, Awutu-Effutu-Senya and Gomoa districts of the Central region had received credit from the bank since 2001. Ms Yeboah said two facilities of the Bank including WID had yielded positive results and enabled the women to pay the school fees of their children and to meet other social responsibilities. Mr Alexander Esua-Mensah, Director of HEPO and a Resource Person, said the aim of the workshop was to build strong financial self-help groups to improve their relations with the Bank. He said HEPO would continue to provide facilitators for the programme to enhance their work and to improve the standard of living of women.