This year’s edition of the annual Springboard Road Show is to be held virtually starting from this Thursday 8th April, 2021. There will be four virtual events in April, June, September and November. This was made known by Mrs Comfort Ocran, Executive Director of the Springboard Roadshow Foundation, organisers of the event, at the media launch of the event on the weekly Springboard Virtual University broadcast over the weekend. “Your favourite Springboard Road Show is going digital in 2021; we will have planned four virtual events to give our participants an all-year-round experience”, Mrs Ocran indicated. The inaugural edition of the Springboard Road Show was held in January 2007 at the Osu Presbyterian Hall in Accra. Since then, the Road Show has gone on to become a household name with young people converging in their thousands every year to listen to achievers from various fields and interact with them in a mentoring experience. After travelling round the regions of Ghana for a decade and moving on to Gambia and Nigeria, organisers of the Road Show announced in their 10th year that they were turning their attention to digital engagement of participants. “At that time, we could not have anticipated the COVID-19 pandemic. We just knew that the online audiences were participating from different towns and countries and enjoying the experience. And it was so flexible to engage them that way, said Rev. Albert Ocran, co-founder of the Springboard Roadshow Foundation. Rev. Ocran added that the theme for the Springboard 2021 Road Show is REPOSITIONING. The deliberations at the various Road Show events will therefore focus on reviewing the past, redesigning the present and reimagining the future. Commenting on the theme, Mrs Phyllis Woode-Nartey, Head of Group Communications and Synergies at the Enterprise Group, who spoke at the launch, said REPOSITIONING resonates well with the Enterprise Group because the company has repositioned as a digitally enabled firm for the benefit of its internal and external stakeholders. “The Enterprise Group continues to partner with Springboard because their objectives are aligned our values of professionalism, trust, excellence, reliability and friendliness”, Mrs Woode-Nartey opined. She added that “Springboard delivers relevant knowledge and the tools to navigate your way forward in life. And it is the place to be if you want to move your professional life forward.” “The virtual Springboard 2021 Road Show is itself a lesson in resilience, adaptation and making adversity work for you”, she added. Making his submission, the Head of Channels at UMB Bank, Dr Myles Hagan said Springboard has over the years provided a rare opportunity for mentors to connect with more youth who are the future of the nation’s growth and prosperity. Dr Hagan, who is himself a Springboard Road Show alumnus, said, “anytime I stand on the Springboard platform, I reflect on the past and God’s grace toward me and it assures me of a great future for participants.” He added that, “Being early adopters of digital technology has enabled UMB to effectively transition to the new normal. We will keep deploying digital platforms to sustain the momentum.” Taking his turn, Mr Franklin Sowa Group Head of Marketing, Graphic Communications Group urged young people to focus more on building quality relationships and less on being transactional and seeking quick wins. “The relationships I have built through networking on such platforms have given me significant career equity”, Mr Sowa stressed. “Even the sky will not be the limit if you make a deliberate effort to be better each day with the platform that Springboard provides.” He added that the collaboration with Springboard supports the Graphic Communications Group to remain relevant, dynamic and to operate in sync with the expectations of existing and potential clients. He further commended organizers of the Springboard Roadshow for creating an exceptional platform that is recommend for everyone, especially the youth. “Listening to life-transforming stories on the Springboard Road Show always inspires hope. It must become a national conversation,” Mr Sowa added. This Thursday’s event will have Nana Dwemoh Benneh, CEO of UMB Bank and Dr Joyce Aryee of the Salt and Light Ministries as the main speakers. The event will have alumni of Springboard Road Show from all over the world sharing stories of how it has impacted their lives. Participants can join this Thursday’s event on Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms from 10am to 12 noon. This year’s Springboard Road Show is sponsored by MTN Pulse, Enterprise Group and UMB Bank with media support from Graphic Communications Group and the Multimedia Group. Organizers are confident that virtual participants at the Springboard 2021 Road Show will enjoy not just the knowledge, but a holistic experience in every respect. “Springboard 2021 will demonstrate to participants, using real life examples, how you navigate your way from the bottom to the top of the professional ladder”, Mrs Comfort Ocran concluded.

Mr Selorm Adadevoh, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, has called on the youth to be conscious of the idea of “Fallacy of Immediacy”, which sometimes discourages them from holding onto their belief and putting in the effort to achieve their dreams. “Too often, we just don’t want it enough. If we want it enough, we shouldn’t lose belief,” he said. He said this at the Global Convocation of the 2019 Springboard Road Show held in Accra over the weekend to empower the youth to identify and build their talents. Speaking on life improvement, Mr Adadevoh said life was about opportunity versus Opportunism, explaining that opportunity was what was available to someone and opportunism was how one took advantage of the opportunity to achieve something positive. He urged the youth to add values to their lives, saying, “there’s no alternative values. It’s either you stick to your values or you don’t have values and success without values is no success”. Using his life as an example, the CEO said he believed in values such as respect, integrity and humility as they were key components to raise people higher. “Nothing in life happens by chance and the more you prepare and chase your dreams, the more your reach your destiny,” he said. Sacrifice, Mr Adadevoh said, is a fundamental investment for entitlement saying, there was no right time to do anything as one just needed to be ready to take a step. “We are all exposed to several opportunities daily but only a few see them. If we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change,” he said. Mrs Comfort Ocran, the Executive Director of the Springboard Road Show Foundation, expressed the profound gratitude of the Foundation to MTN Ghana for being the major sponsor of the Annual Show for 12 years. She said the Show was a paid for event but became free for attendees this year due to the enormous support from its sponsors. She urged participants at the event to be determined to make their lives better not just for personal gains, but in order to provide solutions to societal problems.

The 2018 edition of the Springboard Road Show, a programme that aims at mentoring business executives, civil society leaders, and role models nationwide has begun. The programme, which also aims at human capital development and social transformation is a month-long event, which would be held in four zones; Northern belt in Tamale, Middle belt in Kumasi, Western belt in Cape Coast and Global convocation in Accra. The programme is an initiative of the Springboard Road Show Foundation with support from MTN Ghana and Legacy and Legacy. The theme for this year’s event is: ‘Leveraging Strategy and Technology.’ The Reverend Albert Ocran, Executive Director of Springboard Road Show Foundation, said this year’s event was meant to empower people to leverage on technology for improved productivity. He said technology had become the driving force for economies, hence the need to empower citizens technologically to achieve maximum results. Madam Georgina Fiagbenu, a Senior Communications Manager at MTN Ghana, urged workers to be passionate about what they did to ensure excellence. She said workers must be responsible for the roles they played in organisations advising them to develop positive work attitudes to enhance productivity. Participants were taken through lessons on how to use social media and technology to drive their activities, savings and investments.

More than nine hundred students across the Central Region have benefitted from the 2020 Springboard Road Show in Cape Coast. The event held at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) is an initiative of Springboard Road Show Foundation (SRSF) and supported by MTN Ghana. It is a motivational and personal development event that provides the platform for emerging leaders, young professionals and tertiary students to draw a 10- year career, finance and property acquisition plan. Delivering the keynote address, Mr Noel Kojo-Ganson, the Chief Marketing Officer of MTN Ghana called on stakeholders to create opportunities for the youth to develop their potentials. He urged the youth to take concrete decisions that would help them achieve their goals to become greater personalities to drive national development. Speaking on the theme: “The need for emerging leaders to take stock of circumstances; how to reach your aspirations”, he explained that it was prudent for the youth to have mentors to serve as a source of motivation to empower them to conquer obstacles. The Marketing Officer encouraged young people to work harder, constantly improve their skills and take on more tasks in developing their careers. He tasked them to dream big, share their future ideas, respect other people’s views and listen to those who have different ideas to help in achieving success. In an interview by the GNA, some participants expressed gratitude to MTN and SRSF for the intensive empowerment programme geared towards planning their careers at an early stage for fruitful outcomes. John Abban, a student from the University of Cape Coast said “We thank MTN and SRSF for their vision to develop the talents of young people to facilitate employment creation “.

THE Springboard Road Show Foundation, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and Solidaridad has launched the COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Programme (CoRe), with the aim of supporting over 692,000 young people in the country. The CoRe programme is an e-mentoring, e-coaching and e-counseling intervention aimed at equipping young people in Ghana with relevant skills to enable them to survive and thrive during and after the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The six-month programme, scheduled to run from June to November 2020, has local collaborators including the National Service Scheme, Ghana Psychological Association and Ghana National Association of the Deaf. At the virtual launch of the programme on Springboard, Your Virtual University, the Executive Director of the Springboard Road Show, Mrs Comfort Ocran, said the programme would provide support to beneficiaries in areas such as building resilience, health awareness, and wellness and safety. Others include building relevant workplace skills and job readiness for a post-pandemic era. She said the programme would involve weekly coaching sessions in English and Ghanaian languages to be delivered on radio as well as online. Importance of the programmeMrs Ocran said the programme was meant to deal with the socio-economic impact in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic is probably the biggest disruption to our way of life in living history,” she stated. She said the negative impact of the pandemic cut across social, cultural, psychological, economic, financial and every other aspect of human life, hence the need to introduce such a programme to support the young ones. “The World Bank has forecasted that 23 million Africans might be pushed into extreme poverty as a result of this pandemic. In Ghana, I know there are many people who have lost their jobs, businesses that have scaled down of even closed down and there have been other fallouts which have led to stress, anxiety and fear among many,” she explained. Programme targetMrs Ocran said the programme would be targeting two main beneficiaries – direct beneficiaries and indirect beneficiaries. “The direct beneficiaries are the over 100,000 national service personnel and individuals who have undergone the Mastercard Foundation sponsored YIEDIE programme in various areas of construction in the past five years. Additionally, we have MASO Programme beneficiaries who were trained in agribusiness, especially in the cocoa sector. “The indirect beneficiaries are the patrons of the Virtual University, the Road Show and other Springboard  interventions over the years,” she noted. Need to work togetherThe Regional Director, West, Central and Northern Africa for MasterCard Foundation, Ms Nathalie Akon Gabala, on her part, said the COVID-19 pandemic presented an opportunity for all African governments and associations to unite and work together towards impactful and scalable solutions to respond to the urgent needs arising. She said more importantly, it was necessary to support the young people who had been severely impacted by the pandemic. “MasterCard Foundation has been working on the continent for over a decade to increase access to education and financial services; and in the wake of COVID-19, it is clear that we need to step up our game on the continent to address the pandemic. “Our aim is to create dignified work for young people and we have an objective of creating 30 million jobs for young women and young Africans over the next 10 years,” she stated. She said the foundation also had an aim of keeping the voices of young people at the centre of any work and programme they implemented. “Young people should be able to navigate the crisis and find the resources that they need. They should be equipped to discover new skills and emerge stronger and better. “We all believe that this pandemic will have a long tail and it’s not over yet. We might even have to face a similar crisis again and we want the young people to be able to navigate it with more confidence when it comes,” she noted. Sustainable solutionsThe acting Country Director of Solidaridad, Mr Bossman Owusu, said the organisation believed in developing sustainable solutions to improve supply chains. “We have had some work under the next generation youth cocoa programme where we are bringing sustainable practice to bear in order to improve the situation for young people and encourage them to enter into agriculture and remain in it. “We are mindful that with the onset of COVID-19, many of our young people who hitherto would receive information on agric production, as well as extension services may be limited now because of the restrictions on movement, and our young people are so much concerned about what happens to what they have put into the production.” “It gets to that point where we need to provide that counselling to help them to be able to cope with the stress and anxiety that has been brought by COVID-19. The CoRe programme, therefore, has the back of all young people who have put in very great efforts to support agriculture,” he explained.