In Week 2, the interns had the opportunity to interact with an expert in social action projects. Two sessions were organised on different days and were aimed at empowering the interns with knowledge and insights on their social action projects. This article will provide a recap of the main events that took place.

The first mentorship session took place on the 24th of July, 2023 at with Ms. Kezia Asiedua Sanie, a visionary social entrepreneur and the founder of For The Future Ghana, an NGO combating child poverty and educational disparities. This online coaching session was focused on taking the interns through Kezia’s journey of building her NGO, the challenges she overcame, and sharing some tips to guide the interns in their social impact project journey. The interns were introduced to certain innovative approaches like crowdfunding and partnerships, which could play a key role in realising their social impact project and bringing about change in their communities.

According to Ms. Kezia Asiedua-Sanie, it is hard work to begin a social action project, but the fact that you are taking an opportunity in your community and working around it to create more opportunities makes it worthwhile. She further shared that it is good to work hard, but one should also make time to have fun too.

At the end of the session, the interns had a clear understanding of the intricacies of starting a social start-up, how to form teams with like-minded people, how to set ground rules for teamwork, how to measure the impact rate of a social start-up, how to generate funds for the implementation of a social project, and other future roadmap plans. 

In conclusion, the Week 2 sessions were a resounding success! The interns gained valuable insights on identifying pressing issues in their communities, how to set up a social start-up to tackle these issues, and how to acquire funding for successful implementation of the social start-up objectives. Additionally, they learned about the factors to consider regarding their social action project. Ms. Kezia Asiedua-Sanie’s session provided useful insights on the identification of societal problems, the generation of ideas to solve these problems, and the setting up of a social action start-up.

We look forward to what Week 3 has in store for our summer interns!

Article Written By - Benedicta Owusu (Content Writer Intern)