Junior Achievement – Ghana (Pt 2) 5th Feb 2010

Date: Sunday 28th February, 2010 | Country: Ghana | 5 Comments »

Note: This post is a long one!  Get a cup of tea and a biscuit (or 2) and enjoy.

Junior Achievement (JA)

While working at Barclays I heard about a joint initiative that Barclays was funding in Ghana with an NGO called Junior Achievement.  I asked last year if it would be possible to see what the program was about and write up a report to both Barclays and JA about what I have seen, they said it would be possible.

JA themselves (www.JA.org) have been going since 1919, when their goal back then was to ‘to work on the general advancement of activities for boys and girls.’

Today, JA Worldwide impacts students through a network of 139 U.S. Area Offices, and nearly 100 International Members. More than 8 million youth annually complete JA programs each year.  In Accra we were put in touch with Jefferson Agbai the CEO for the Ghana branch of JA.  He and his colleagues Kwabena and Mickson have now implemented JA within 50 odd schools and communities in Ghana and are looking to expand this even more during 2010.  There are a number of programs that are implemented in all levels of schools here starting in primary schools where they teach kids on what it means to be an entrepreneur to setting up a company and trying to make a profit within secondary/high schools.

Left: JA Office  Right: Jefferson & Mickey

JA works in partnership with many companies and with Barclays it has a job shadow program that allows secondary school kids to enter a number of different Barclays departments/branches and see what work gets done behind the scenes of the bank.

We were introduced to Mickson (Mickey) who is the main implementer of these programs and is on the road most of the week as he visits all the schools in progress and also sets up new programs in schools.  Mickey told us that their one vehicle was at a mechanics and so we agreed that Mickey would be an extra passenger on our visit to the Eastern region.

We arrived in Nkawkaw and met Mickey who had travelled to here the day before, it was hot and the town was bustling, in the distance Mickey pointed to the large hilltop and told us that is where we would be going to.  Nkwatia Secondary school had been running JA for a year and as like all other Ghana schools, students choose to join the JA club which they partake in during a set period during school hours set aside for their clubs as well as anytime after school.  A president and executives are selected (Finance, Production, Marketing/Sales etc) and they float shares to raise capital, if the company makes a profit then dividends may be given out as with any other company.  A teacher is selected as the School JA coordinator that helps the students start-up and run their company and is the contact with Mickey to let JA know how their school is doing.

Before I talk about my experiences here and in other schools, I want you to imagine being a Dragon on Dragon’s den but this time the products/inventors are the students and their market are the students in their own school, we would listen to each company and hear about why they created a particular product and hear what their production costs were and see if what they were doing was sensible and viable.

Nkwatia Secondary had decided to create a Notebook with their own school logo as their product, when I asked about the competition they mentioned you can get a larger book than theirs for 0.50 cedis (25p), their notebook was on sale in school for 1 cedi (50p).  What was apparent was that this group of students didn’t research the students (circa 1000) who would be buying their product too much to see if a school logo on a book would be worth paying double the price for a notepad.  They also didn’t seem to have any kind of marketing strategy as to how to get this known within the whole of the school.  We had asked other classrooms if they knew about the JA club and what they were doing and many students didn’t know.  I was also surprised by the fact that not all the members of the company were willing to stand up and talk about their own experiences, at the end of the hours discussion, I was honest and told them they they should have considered their market more importantly and maybe tried harder to get a more competitive manufacturer but all is not lost if they were able to setup an event whereby they could see their notepad to the parents as well as the students, and after an hour or so we said our goodbyes and the class were left with a lot to think about.

Above: The teachers and students of Nkwatia Secondary High school

Mickey had arranged it for us that we could stay with him in his uncles compound which was also being rented by several of the teachers for Nkwatia Secondary.  We stayed here for 3 nights and we had a lot of fun with Kobe (Bottom left photo, second to left), Pearl and all the others that made our stay very nice.

Top right: Mickey’s friends and family,Bottom: Junior (Kobe’s drumming son) & Daniel

The next day we visited Ghana Secondary High School (Ghanass) in Koforudia to meet a company that were producing a school bag as part of their company product.  It seemed that this company had done their research and were producing a competitive product into their school.  The school bag cost 2 cedi’s (£1) to produce and they were selling them for 3 cedis (£1.50), the competition was selling it at a similar price without their school logo, they had already sold most of the 500 that they had initially produced and were looking at new products or additional stock to sell more.  It was nice to meet a group of kids that had taken on board the advice they were given and were enjoying the experience of being entrepreneurs in their own school.

Above: Ghanass and their popular school bag

We visited St Peters boys secondary school where the company had been in setup over the past few years and so they were in a position to have learnt from their mistakes and produce the items that they know would be successful.  Their company we found out were producing several items, a few t-shirts, a key ring, a bag and they were looking at expanding these to new products as well.  On meeting the company it was clear that this group of guys were probably over doing the number of products as some didn’t quite make financial sense to keep them going, it was a case of continuing what previous students had setup and instead of evaluating is it made sense to continue with them, they simply continued to produce them.  They were producing a school key ring that was brining in a 50% profit per item and I told them that maybe they should focus on getting this out to the whole of the school circ 1000+ students as opposed to a T-shirt with their logo that was bringing in a small profit but more expensive and there was really a need for the product.  This school was interesting for the debate that ensued which led some shareholders to complain to the executives as they felt they were not part of the decision making process.  We agreed at the end of the session that a number of committees would be created to allow shareholders to attend to allow them to add their own input as to where the company was going.

Above: St.Peters Secondary, Nkwatia

We also managed to visit a number of Junior schools in the eastern & western region where Mickey was introducing a program which taught children what it means to be an entrepreneur,  the program sets up kids to start thinking about business and teaches them that some of the great entrepreneurs started with nothing at a very young age and I believe is a great way of teaching kids that there are many ways to be financially independent without thinking that the only path you must take is higher education and then university, that is all fine but these kids shouldn’t solely focus on that and if they have an idea for a business it can be done if they simply know some techniques and tools that JA teaches them.

Junior Achievement in Junior schools

We also managed to see a few schools in the the Western region, we were fortunate to be put up in St.Johns so we thank them for the accommodation there.  We saw 2 contrasting schools in terms of their own achievements, I’ll start with St.Johns, when we arrived we were told from the company about their product which was a painting.  The idea behind it was that the painting would symbolise what St.Johns school is all about, and is a unique work of art for the buyer. Unfortunately the painting itself was being hand painted and mass produced by one individual in the company that had 20 other members, they had sold a handful of these paintings since they started late last year and my first query with this was why did they choose a product that would not appeal to the masses in the school (at a price of 10 cedi’s or £5) where there target market were the families of the children who they were not too close to. Honestly the company had taken the wrong path early on and never assessed if this was still right until they had spent far too much time on it.  After my honest appraisal which had left these students realising they had made the wrong decision they then told us about their wrist bands that they were going to produce for the school.  Everything sounded fine until they told me that they were targeting a big event which was the anniversary of the school in a few days time where many old boys would be attending as well as parents.  They had received a word of mouth promise that the product would be available from the manufacturer but nothing in writing, they had no receipt for the 500 cedi’s (£250) that they had parted with, and they had no idea what the product would look like before the delivery a few hrs before the event, I told them they were entering this with blind faith and it was risky and potentially a terrible way of doing business.  They had also wanted these wrist bands to glow in the dark, which meant a higher production cost, I questioned if this was needed for a new product and its more of a nice to have.  The anniversary event itself was over 2 days in the daylight so they wouldn’t be able to show off their glow in the dark capabilities, I told them their planning for this had too many holes.  The last problem was that they didn’t know if the students themselves would be allowed to wear these in school, so if they didn’t manage to sell all 500 to the people attending the anniversary they might be left with an unsellable stock.  We left them with a lot to think about.  This also highlighted the need for these companies to have good school co-ordinators that help guide these students rather than letting them run their own show as this is the result if so.

St.Johns – Many lessons to be learnt

I’d like to end this section on the school that impressed me the most, Fijai Secondary school which is a few minutes drive away from St Johns.  Fijai had started their company the same time as St Johns late last year.  We heard how they did their market research and asked the majority of the 1000 students the sort of products they would be interested in having.  They decided to produce a notebook and a sticker with the school logo and motto ‘Young Souls’ written on it.  They managed to get a good competitive price with the printer manufacturer for the notepads so that they were almost undercutting the competition, and the sticker which was minimal in costs allowed them to make a nice 100% profit per item.  In the past couple of months their sales team and rest of the company were able to blitz the new students coming into the school as well as their own peers, and from the initial 500 notepads and 100 stickers they had sold 98% of their product.  After experiencing the other schools, the quality of the students here were by far better in their approach, their mentality and their ability to work together and provide a sensible approach. They even took a risk on the notepads when they took I.O.U’s for the majority of their notepads. I asked them what if the students didn’t pay but they were realistic enough to tell me that students reputations here are important and so they were able to adopt this strategy.

Above: Fijai Secondary School

There were a few observations that I made along the way:

- JA Under resourced. With a team of 3 individuals and the help of some part time volunteers it seems that JA Ghana is doing an incredible job getting their programs in as many schools as they have, with a goal to increase this coverage during 2010.  There is a risk that the support that JA offers these schools could not be as good if they are already at maximum effort with the current assistance they are providing.  It seemed that Mickey was constantly being demanded to visit schools and was not always able to be there due to his commitments with other schools.

- Getting the correct School Coordinators. It was very apparent that some schools needed another in house coordinator as the companies were suffering through lack of guidance.  I don’t know what the selection process is, but I don’t believe (especially in the secondary schools) that having someone offer their services is sufficient enough for this role.  They need to have passion that will then feed into the JA clubs.  I appreciate this isn’t always easy to find.  I don’t know how often coordinators get together but having regional meetings every now and then could be beneficial to share ideas.

- Bringing in external members to meet the JA clubs. I got the impression from all the schools that we visited that the discussions were very useful to members of each company, whether it was for an outsider to be able to come in with fresh eyes, or to hear what they already knew but were afraid to say it, some also enjoyed the challenge of being put on the spot and being questioned over their own decisions.  To bring in more people from the likes of Barclays and other companies you have Joint ventures with I’m sure would be a success within the schools.

- The Marketing of JA needs more presence.  Apart from the odd JA document that I saw floating around certain schools, it wasn’t apparent how students,teachers and more importantly the parents and public would know what a great organisation JA is about and why they are doing what they do.  In terms of donations I don’t see how people would be able to do this without a decent marketing campaign yourself?

- The presence of Barclays. I heard from many students how they loved the job shadow program that allowed them to see the various offices and departments for a day, however as no one from Barclays assisted us through our visits to a dozen or so schools it was unclear where Barclays was taking this partnership and many children wanted to know what else Barclays had in mind for them in the future.  We met up with Solomon when we first got to Accra but would have been useful to meet with him more than just the once.  I understand work commitments don’t always allow time to do this, something for review for the future maybe?

Conclusion

Throughout the past 2 weeks both Reka and I have been privileged to visit many schools in Ghana, we have seen all sorts of schools with varying levels of students as well as facilities.  There is a common factor in that these schools have instilled a serious respect for teachers and for their own fellow students.  Students are also taught to respect their own surroundings as I saw many students cleaning parts of their schools as part of a weekly rota.  I was surprised by how shy some students were but realised that many would become more confident to talk for themselves as time went on during these discussions.  The role of Junior Achievement I can see has had a huge positive effect on the schools where this has been introduced.  To be able to know how to setup and run a company and potentially make a profit while still at school is an amazing thing to learn.  I could see that in every class we visited there was at least one individual that was destined to become a successful entrepreneur and that surely cannot be a bad thing. We’d like to thank Jefferson, Kwabena and of course Mickey for a wonderful experience and we wish you all the best in the future.

---