When we hear about the African Culture and Development Association (ACDA), the tendency is to think of Emancipation Festivals, which are held countrywide, on August 1 every year, particularly in the capital city of Georgetown.

But there is much more to the organisation, according to Aisha Haynes, who sat down with the Pepperpot Magazine to tell us more about ACDA. A member of ACDA herself, Haynes said that the association runs entrepreneurial training for persons who want to or are already in the process of running their own small business.

During her interview, she noted that there are a number of persons who, as a result of ACDA’s training, are doing extremely well in their sphere of business and entrepreneurial enterprise.
“We have done entrepreneurial training, we have actually run programmes, where we have seen lots of young people venturing out to owning their own businesses, you know literally stepping into a different world,” Haynes noted during her interview.

Despite the many challenges faced by individuals who have undergone training at the centre, they have defied the odds, and developed ideas that have bloomed into big and thriving businesses.
“When you see initiatives like that, positive messages come out of it. Sometimes you are tired and fatigued because of the sacrifices you make to facilitate other people’s interests, but what keeps you going is the positivity that is garnered,” Haynes noted.

She noted that those things are encouraging adding that the association has had a programme for aviation training, where students were taught to fly aircraft for the very first time.
Haynes could not help but underscore the great initiatives the association has taken and the programmes it has done to equip the next generation with the necessary skills to meet the demands of tomorrow’s generation.

According to Haynes, through its training programmes, ACDA has provided employment and employment opportunities for hundreds of young people and people of all ages through skills training.
It has also promoted economic advancement and empowerment, economic agency and self-confidence; expanded access to business and entrepreneurial training, access to investment capital, and capital accumulation and wealth and assets creation; organised African Guyanese entrepreneurs, construction, trades, and service providers in cooperative networks; rebuild and strengthen African Guyanese businesses and producer organisations; reduce poverty; and ensure a sustainable socio-economic future for the African-Guyanese collective.

Other benefits include creating sustainable jobs and employment opportunities for African Guyanese; enhancing employability through access to education and training institutions; enhancing appropriate skill levels through skills training and life-long learning; increasing access to tertiary and professional education and training and expanding access to high-paying professional and technology-based occupations; reducing poverty; and inculcating appropriate workplace attitudes and behaviours towards producing a skilled and productive African-Guyanese workforce.
Haynes noted that ACDA hosts Emancipation festivals in different communities at different times of the year, considering the fact that this is the organisation of volunteers who work tirelessly with limited resources at their disposal.

“We also have a school called ‘the Centre of Learning Afrocentric Orientation’. Initially, before we started the programme, we had started a programme that focuses on at-risk youths. These were persons whom society says don’t have a chance. It was as a result that a mentorship programme was launched,” Haynes disclosed to the Pepperpot Magazine.