Project to empower street youth launched
A project dubbed, ‘‘Increasing the Earning Power of Street Youth in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Area,’’ has been launched.
Under the project, a total of 45 persons, made up 15 youth workers and 30 young unemployed people are undergoing a two-week training of trainers course in Takoradi.
After their successful completion of the training, the targeted persons, mainly the marginalised in society, will be provided with start-up tools that would empower them in their respective business engagements.
It was expected that the beneficiaries who will have been able to develop their business plans will train more people as a way of building the local capacity, thereby reducing the hitherto engagement in unproductive ventures in active involvement in nefarious activities within the metropolis.
The project was jointly being organised by Street Kids International, United Kingdom (UK) and the Head of State Awards (HoSA) with the support of Barclays Bank.
Mr Emmanuel Papa Assan, the Western Regional Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA), who performed the launch, described the intervention of the project by the collaborators as very laudable since it was aimed at empowering the Ghanaian youth.
The NYA director stressed that the project would eventually transform the economic status of the young people in the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis from that of poverty into successful entrepreneurship, gainful employment and responsible adulthood.
He said the NYA strongly associated itself with such a programme which he noted was geared towards the national youth policy implementation plan for 2014-2017 and would, therefore, complement efforts in ensuring a maximum outcome of the policy and the millennium development goal (MDG) 1, on eradication of extreme hunger and poverty.
Mr Assan explained that young people today found it difficult to take their rightful places in society since the cultural and social structures did not only restrict their ability to explore but they were always elusive, adding that usually, the youth suffered injustice and lived in inhuman conditions.
The Head of Programmes, Street Kids International, UK, Madam Wumi Onadipe, explained that the training in Ghana would produce master trainers who would in future be sent out of the country to train other youth, adding that the end result was that the young ones would be able to run their own businesses well as they kept proper accounting books.
Mr Peter Anum, the Executive Director of HoSA, observed that his outfit had worked to motivate young people to learn new things in addition to what they studied in the classroom, saying they added value to themselves.
