The Design and Technology Institute has trained over 1,400 Mastercraft persons and small and medium-scale enterprises in the Volta Region in precision quality to enhance their work delivery. 

The training forms part of DTI’s Coaching Programme which seeks to equip young Ghanaians with the requisite skill set to position them to compete with products and services on the global market. 

The Mastercard Foundation partnered with the Design and Technology Institute to implement the “Transforming youth TVET livelihoods for sustainable jobs” project under it's Young Africa Works strategy. 

DTI formulated a Coaching Programme as part of the three-year project to expand the knowledge of Mastercraft persons and artisans in precision quality in the Volta, Ashanti and Central Regions. 

Mastercraft persons and SMEs in ten communities benefited from the training across the Volta Region. 

The Volta Regional facilitator, Dr. Daniel Agbeko, explained that the beneficiaries were trained in five modules to enable them to effectively manage their businesses to enhance productivity. 

He listed change to do, process integration, team and people management, health and safety, customer and product managements as the five foundation modules. 

Dr. Agbeko said after careful study of the outcomes of the training and performance of the beneficiaries, there was a need to introduce two more modules to complement the precision quality training. 

“What we realized was that the PQ training alone is not giving the desired impact that we want. So we did a baseline study and we realized that they [beneficiaries] needed two key trainings to be able to make the PQ comprehensive. 

That is financial management and then leadership management, because those two were lacking. So we took the baseline digger and then introduced both the financial management training and leadership management training, and after 3 months we came back and measured the impact and then we realised that the impact was gargantuan based on these two interventions”, he explained. 

The Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist of DTI, Edwin Fayorse, said that to aid the beneficiaries better understand precision quality, the institute decided to introduce drama to highlight the significant role PQ plays in the business environment. 

“This colorful event, we call the ‘drama edutainment’ is a set up of the precision quality classroom training we give these artisans. We actually brought them here to demonstrate in a drama form what precision quality really means”, he said.

He stressed that precision quality is a requisite skill set which all artisans must acquire to enable them fit into the world’s business environment and access varied opportunities which would propel the growth of their enterprises. 

Mr. Fayorse said 7,000 Mastercraft persons and SMEs have benefited from the precision quality training nationwide. 

He disclosed that DTI aims to scale up and extend the training to a larger number of beneficiaries, promising to cover the entire Volta Region. 

A beneficiary, Peace Agbo, said the training educated her on how to keep stock, manage her finances, and relate to customers better among others, which contributed to the growth of her business. 

DTI expects that the Coaching Programme which would end in June 2023, would provide 40,000 direct and indirect work opportunities for the beneficiaries.