The Manna Education and Development Foundation, a charitable organisation has presented working tools and equipment valued GHC60,000 to some young people in the Sunyani Municipality to undergo employable skills training and fetch themselves decent jobs.
The items comprise 12 sewing machines, hair rollers, dryers, tables, plastic chairs, mechanical and electrical tools and gadgets and apprenticeship working boots.
Mostly young girls and nursing mothers, between ages 15 and 25 years, the foundation also paid the apprenticeship fees ranging between GHC1,000 and GHC1,500 for the 22 beneficiaries, selected from Kuotokrom and Yawhima in the Municipality.
The Foundation, established by Dr Janet Baah, a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian Councillor at the UK’s Lewes Council in 2022, also presented a laptop computer as well as exercise and textbooks to two needy students in the area.
Speaking at a short ceremony held at Kuotokrom, Mrs Esther Obeng Takyiwaa, the Twin-Sister of Dr Baah, stressed the foundation’s commitment to provide decent jobs by registering interested young people to engage in apprenticeship and employable skills training activities.
She said the economic situation around the globe required that every wealthy citizen home and abroad supported the government and contributed his/her quota towards job creation and poverty reduction.
Doing so, Mrs Takyiwaa said the government would be able to tackle the rising youth unemployment in the country and ameliorate the socio-economic lives of the people.
She said the foundation had started registering interested young people at Abesim, Atronie and their adjoining communities in the municipality and would soon donate similar items to them.
“The foundation has secured a large parcel of land in the municipality and very soon it will begin work on the construction of an Employable Skills Training Center to provide free training for interested young people to better their lives”, she stated.
Mr Dramani Mahama, the Assemblyman for Kuotokrom Electoral Area, described the support as timely, and thanked the foundation, saying it would help, particularly, the single nursing mothers to fend for themselves and their children.
He said more of such support was needed to create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth in the area, and advised the beneficiaries to take their training serious to justify the investment being made in them.
Mr Kingsley Kusi Appiah, a Board Member of the Foundation later told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that employable skills such as auto-mechanic, masonry, carpentry and joining, hairdressing, dressmaking and makeups held the key to tackling the rising youth unemployment in the country.
He noted that unemployment threatened national security, regretting that some enterprising young people in the Municipality were engaged in drug peddling and abuse, alcoholism, stealing and other unhealthy lifestyles because they were unemployed.
“We can all help and make these young boys and girls responsible and drive them from the street if we resolve to do so by helping them to find something worthy to do with their lives,” Mr Appiah stated.
Miss Victoria Gompau, a 22-year-old seamstress apprentice and a beneficiary at Yawhima, expressed her heartfelt gratitude and appealed to the foundation to endeavour to extend the assistance to many of the young single mothers in the area.
