Friday, 1 July 2016

WHY DO WE ALWAYS WANT TO BE EMPLOYED


This has been a question on my mind from the very moment I heard about the graduate unemployment association of Ghana. I have been kept awake when I realized the unemployment rate in Ghana keeps rising year after year with most graduate unable to secure jobs for themselves.

So I asked myself; what is the essence of education? Is it a mechanism developed to make the  lives of people better or worse off? Is it a mechanism geared towards enslaving an individual or to set him or her free? Why aren't we able to think to solve the problems of the world but rather we go and add up to them as graduates?
Education is known to be the process of learning through which skills are developed and faculties trained. It has never being about our ability to read instructions and following suit, but instead, an avenue for acquiring skills and developing our minds. Why then do we have people with good analytical and problem solving skills (graduates) living in a world full of problems and challenges and yet claiming not to be finding any work to do?

This attitude on the path of our graduates has resulted in people pointing accusing fingers at the government and our educational institutions for being so hard on them and providing them with jobs to do, forgetting we are the cause of our own problems. We always want people to hire us for the skills we posses but we do nothing in trying to help solve the problems of our society with these skills of ours without getting hired. We are where we are now as a nation because individuals in the country are more concerned with what the country has to offer them other than what they have to offer it. 

We do not need a change in our educational system,we do not need a change in our governance, but what we need is a change in our thinking. We need to think about ways we can help society become a better place and when we do that, society is going to reward us accordingly. Always think about getting the job done and not on the reward, for so long as your actions and activities benefits society, you always be remembered and rewarded.  
Zuckerberg; founder of Facebook, realized that the world needed a social platform where they can connectwith friends all over the world; an effort geared towards the world a global village. He tried to help, and till today we are all benefiting from his works and he keep receiving his reward for that bold step. Ali Sumaila of www.samaflemfoudation.wordpress.com realized our kids at the basic level of education needed to select their high school programs based on their strength, and is helping with that and will be receiving his rewards till the end of days. Princess Allotey of kidsandmath is also helping our kids at the basic level gain a good math foundation since without that their education journey will be short lived. These are young people who are doing something to change the problems they came to meet in their society. But the amazing part is, they are both students. You need not to be a graduate before you start doing something for yourself and society, you can start now. You have all that that it takes to do that. 

We all have what it takes to make the world exactly how you want it, you don't have to wait to be hired before we do that. Hire yourself, start exactly where you are and with what you have. Until you are able to cease your future by doing something for yourself, you will forever remain enslaved to the ideas of others. Esi Amoako, branch manager at enterprise life, said; when you do what is expected of you you will forever remain a slave but when you do more than that, you are a free man. Desire to be a freeman not a slave. Own your life and your business. 

Remember, business owners are not different from you, they only think different from you. Hence think different to be different.



Emmanuel Sackey