The winner of TV3’s maiden reality show, The Top Intern, Raphael Kaizer Tetteh, has revealed that he was confident in his project christened the “Savanna Glow,” which seeks to bring an end to the perennial migration of women and men from northern Ghan in search of non-existing jobs in big cities such as Accra and Kumasi.
These women work as head porters, popularly known as “Kayaye.” Kaizer is hopeful that the shea butter business under the ‘Savanna Glow’ project will be a panacea to the menace. This will also demotivate other women from the idea of travelling down south for employment opportunities.
“The confidence level was high because I believed in the project I was doing,” said Kaizer, adding that “it is something that is an issue for everybody we all do not like to see the head porters, that is, the Kayayes on the streets, but then no one is doing anything about it.” Although Kaizer noted that he was confident in himself, he stressed that the project was more tangible and that it would sell to others.
The carefully thought-through Savanna Glow project also took into consideration a number of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This, he said, is because of the global drive for economies and governments around the world to work towards achieving them by 2030.
“Savanna Glow falls within a variety of the SDGs; one of them is Goal One, which seeks to tackle poverty. These women fall within the poverty bracket, so we are looking to eradicate that. Goal Two is zero hunger, when they have money, they will be able to fend for themselves. Goal Eight talks about decent work and economic growth. The work these women do is not decent, and my project seeks to give them decent working conditions,” Raphael Kaizer explained.
Raphael emphasised that the project was not just meant for scoring points on the show but one that the judges expect to see come to fruition. He went on to explain that, as part of activities to ensure Savanna Glow sees the light of day, there will be crowdfunding efforts from the public to raise the estimated GHS 1.2 million in seed money for the project.
“We will be appealing to Ghanaians. People thought the projects that we came to deliver were just assignments for the contest but then it goes beyond that, these are things that the judges want to see come to fruition that is why we went through this whole process of putting these projects together,” said Raphael Kaizer.
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“Per the estimates that we made, the initial target we are looking at for the project is 100 people, and then we expand. So the minimum amount of capital we need to be able to execute the project is GHS 1.2 million. To raise this money, if we get 2,000 people and each of them is pledging support of 600 cedis, that will give us the 1.2 million,” he explained.
Meanwhile, he noted that there would be avenues for people to own share in the company as well as calling on government agencies and individuals who are interested in the project to come to their aid.
Raphael had few words for future applicants of ‘The Top Intern’ show
As the winner of the maiden edition, Raphael Kaizer urged future contestants and persons who are interested in applying to the show in the next episode to be conversant with research and also be able to think instantaneously.
“For contestants who want to come on the show, you have to read. You have gone to prepare a work with your team, but if you cannot defend that work, you will be thrown out,” he said.
“And then you should be familiar with research. Research is not just going to Google, getting what someone has written, picking it up, and putting it together, no, get three or four documents to compare the trends, and then you would be able to make a deductive conclusion.”