Gary Shaheen and Romel Mackelprang ventured to Ghana in early February to establish an inclusive entrepreneurship program.

The program provides training and technical assistance to individuals with disabilities, helping them become self-employed.

Shaheen, senior vice president of Syracuse University’s Burton Blatt Institute, and Mackelprang, an Eastern Washington University professor, worked with partners in Ghana to help Ghanaians with disabilities learn to launch their own businesses, according to a Feb. 21 SU News release. Their partners included the Centre for Disability and Rehabilitation Studies and foundations like Engage Now Africa.

The project is a collaborative effort between BBI, SU’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management and EWU, and it allows students at both universities to actively participate in the project and work with budding entrepreneurs in the United States and abroad, Shaheen said.

The inclusive entrepreneurship program provided training to more than 250 people with disabilities in Onondaga County and helped start 60 small businesses around the area, Shaheen said.

‘The project is at its very early stages,’ he said. ‘The important part of what we’re starting to do is reaffirming that people with disabilities, who are thought to be unable to work or own a business, … if you provide opportunities and training, they can, in fact, do it and help themselves and their families have better lives.’

Disabled Ghanaians experience a 90 percent unemployment rate, and people in Ghana are very interested in starting an inclusive entrepreneurship program to help find jobs for disabled individuals in their community, Shaheen said.

‘Our partners in Ghana really endorsed the inclusive entrepreneurship as applicable to the folks that they serve,’ Shaheen said.

He said he is currently working on funding proposals to help build on the foundation laid in Ghana during his trip there.

While in Ghana, Shaheen and Mackelprang taught a disability and entrepreneurship class at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and visited several businesses already employing people with disabilities, Shaheen said.

Mackelprang said Ghana has both the need for inclusive entrepreneurship and the basic infrastructure to implement the program in real business situations.

‘We had the opportunity to bring our expertise in and collaborate with the experts that were already on the ground,’ Mackelprang said. ‘The receptive people there, as well as the crying need of folks with disabilities, combined to make this a great opportunity for us.’

Mackelprang worked with entrepreneurship in Ghana for three years, and he said that BBI is an excellent vehicle to combine his work with Shaheen’s and others at SU.

BBI is committed to carrying on the legacy of its founder, Burton Blatt, to support those with disabilities and have a positive effect on their lives, said Anthony Adornato, director of communications for BBI.

‘This trip to Ghana is one of the international components of BBI’s work,’ Adornato said. ‘The inclusive entrepreneurship program was successful locally and nationally, and Gary (Shaheen) and BBI are trying to take the impact of the program to the international front.’

The goal of the program in Ghana is to train and secure funding for about 45 disabled Ghanaians per year to start their own businesses and to equip 125 students per year to be business consultants for these new entrepreneurs, according to the SU News release.

‘This program is a joint effort among many different people and organizations,’ Shaheen said. ‘It all begins with a partnership.’

sjtaddeo@syr.edu

Published on February 28, 2012 at 12:00 pm