Program Provides Afghan Business Owners With Training, Resources and Investment Critical To Business Success and for Building an Expanding Afghan Private Sector

Kabul, Afghanistan—September 24, 2019—The Bayat Foundation (www.bayatfoundation.org), Afghanistan’s largest, private Health, Education and Social Development Organization, demonstrated its commitment to developing the Afghan private sector, by announcing the selection of twenty-five Afghan owners of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s), who will participate in the second annual The Bright Future Business Accelerator Program, Afghanistan’s preeminent Networking, Business Development and Business Education Program for Young Afghan Entrepreneurs.

Bright Future Business Accelerator provides business development training to Afghan business owners. The mission of the Bright Future Business Accelerator is to help develop an Afghan national economy, which supports the formation of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s)—the types of companies Afghanistan needs to create millions of jobs and help accelerate Afghanistan’s economic development.

Bright Future Afghanistan, is a consortium of four Afghan non-profit organizations: The Bayat Foundation, Cordaid (www.cordaid.org), the 1% Club (www.onepercentclub.com), and the Hamika Baramaki Organization for the Rule of Law (www.hborl.org.af). Bright Future is a five-year program designed to teach important business skills to Afghan entrepreneurs and to create a thriving Afghan private sector of small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s), capable of providing thousands of employment opportunities to Afghans—especially Afghan youth.

A ceremony welcoming the twenty-five Afghan business owners to the Bright Future Business Acceleration Program was held on September 1, 2019 at the Cordaid Enterprise Academy in Kabul.  Following a speech of welcome from Mr. Jaap Van Hierden, the Cordaid Representative For Afghanistan, the Afghan business owners participated in a networking session with the program’s officials, where they discussed the types of training and services the Business Acceleration Program will provide to each business owner.

The twenty-five Afghan business owners participating in the Business Acceleration Program will receive training on a broad range of business development subjects, including:

• Business Plan Development
• Marketing and Sales
• Pricing and Financial Management
• Production and Logistics
• Management and Communications
• Database Management

“Supporting the formation and growth of small and medium sized enterprises is critical to Afghanistan’s economic development,” said Dr. Ehsanollah Bayat, the Co-Founder and Chairman of The Bayat Foundation. “The business development services provided by the Bright Future Business Acceleration Program will help position many Afghan Small and Medium Sized companies for long term growth and success.”