MASO is a five year programme, focused on creating employment opportunities for the youth (aged 18-25) in Ghana’s cocoa communities.
The MASO Programme has started the process of recruiting the final cohort of youth for its Business and Cocoa Academies. MASO has since 2016 recruited over 8,300 young people across six cocoa growing regions of Ghana. The youth were supported through an incubation programme to develop skills in cocoa farming and or develop start businesses providing services to the cocoa sector in their communities.
Our teams are presently in the field collecting baseline data on youth who were pre-screen in February 2019.
The baseline is to gather sufficient information about the participants and their interest in cocoa. It also seeks to target the already screened youth for the last cohort to be interviewed. The data bothers on questions pertaining to their living, education, finances, employment and many more.
After the baseline, the selected youth are expected to participate in a year training, coaching and mentoring within their communities. Field experts through their Farmer Field Schools in their communities’ train the youth on Best farm practices, life skills, financial literacy, public speaking, hygiene etc.
The participants are expected to commit their time and energy in the cocoa academies training and must be willing to implement and share knowledge received from the academies.
The MASO Programme is in its fourth year of implementation.
