Teachers Must Find Other Streams Of Income

Dr. Abdul-Fatahi Abdula Kambala advised teachers to generate extra streams of income within times they are not in school teaching to complement their monthly salaries and not rely only on loans for survival.

He said this during a public lecture at the Tamale College of Education in Tamale following a weeklong celebration of the college’s annual SRC week for the 2018/19 academic year, which started from the 8th to end on the 16th of June, 2019.

The theme for the celebration was “Rising to the New Standards in Teacher Education”. Attended by a cross-section of the students, the entrepreneurship and business development consultant lamented the plight of teachers in Ghana in the lecture.

He noted that the time wasted by teachers during holidays and after school hours can be invested in learning to acquire knowledge and skills through workshops, seminars and training programmes available to liberate themselves from the shackles of poverty and frustrations.

He added that they should always remember that knowledge capital is what they need first to start business ventures and not money which is financial capital that has always been the hurdle for everyone across the country.

The entrepreneurship and business development guru, who also writes for Business and Financial Times (B&FT) on issues of entrepreneurship, innovation, university entrepreneurship, graduate unemployment, start-ups and private sector involvement in job creation in Ghana said with knowledge capital one can harness other capitals such as: social capital, network capital, human capital and financial capital to successfully launch their business anywhere in the country.

He however, emphasised on specialised knowledge on entrepreneurship and business development to be precise, where creativity and innovation are the hallmarks for achievement.

Speaking to participants on the topic “How to become an entrepreneurs”, Dr. Kambala said teachers under training and those in schools need to have life purpose and vision to be able to plan for better future, something he said is not common among Ghanaian youth in general and that the two should guide them to design plans to reach the top, attain financial freedom and prosperity since prosperity is a human birthright.

Explaining how to plan, he said though there is no one-fit-all blue print for planning, in principle, a successful and strategic plan needs to have short, medium and long term goals to be a real framework for success.

He also made it clear that as creatures of enterprise; we human can transact among ourselves by creating value for value relationship and insisted that teachers in Ghana should therefore not be left out.

To create value through business, he advised teachers to start saving thirty percent of their income toward their dream businesses. More so, they can help people already in industries of their interest to gain experience and again to earn extra income to boost up their savings without having to borrow from anyone or body to start their own.

Added to that, he called on young people in the country to learn from experienced and successful entrepreneurs and desist from stealing to get reach fast, referring to recent theft cases involving young people working for their mentors and managers in the metropolis.

Answering questions from participants, the UK trained academic entrepreneur said working under someone is an opportunity to learn and not to steal and that skills one acquires through that form part of the knowledge capital needed to start a business.

On fear of failure and risk he said “failure is part of life, a temporal defeat and above all and opportunity to start again, this time wisely and intelligently” and admonished everyone not to accept or submit to failure, particularly in business.

In his final remarks, he stressed that the time has come for teachers to disrupt the status quo, thinks outside the box and set new norms that will see them progress towards prosperity and good life.

He also said as a people we should begin to challenge our core beliefs, subject them to serious scrutiny and find out if they will all survive it because some of them draw us back and make us sabotage our own growth and development as a people.