The International Labour Organisation in partnership with some other agencies has organized a three-day fundraising workshop to equip partners on how to raise funds for “Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises.”

Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) is an International Labour Organisation (ILO) global programme that seeks to improve productivity and working conditions in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

The key intervention of the global programme is a training intervention which combines practical classroom sessions with in-factory consulting.

Speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, National Program Coordinator for SCORE, Samuel Asiedu said the workshop is to help build capacities of investors to access resources to support the training of SMEs.

According to him, ILO will no longer fund the programme because SCORE is at Phase 3, which shows that the programme is mature and will do fine when handed to new investors.

“It is apparent that training is key when it comes to the development of enterprises. Enterprises that receive and apply training have higher performances as compared to other enterprises that do not receive training. Unfortunately in Ghana our interest in training is on the lower side."

"Many of the enterprises do not have it on their plans but at SCORE, we’re promoting training, training that would improve upon the competitiveness, the productivity and quality of enterprises. So this workshop is seeking to strengthen the capacity of our implementing partners that deliver SCORE to SMEs to be able to leverage resources that are around us,” he said.

Head of Research and Consultancy at the Chartered Institute of Bankers, Professor Samuel Lartey advised businesses to pay keen attention to human resource as it is one of the key determinants of the success or failure of any business.

“I knew that once I was coming to present, my constituency will be expecting me to be talking about donor funding like USAID but I just wanted to remind them that before we even get there, let us reflect on what we already have. We should look at our profit activities, our loss activities in our organizations. If it is too difficult to identify profit and loss activities, note that whatever will feed your company is a profit activity, feed it to feed you and whatever will eat your company is a loss activity, starve it and make work grow,” he emphasized.

The workshop themed “Partnerships Building and Fundraising Workshop for Implementing Partners” discussed issues relevant to fundraising like, mapping of potential funding agencies in Ghana, funding cycles and strategic directions of partners, essentials of a winning proposal, institutional structures and arrangements required by funding partners and networking and partnership building for funding.