YOUTH ALIVE TRAINS YOUTH IN PRODUCTIVE VENTURES (PAGE 11, APRIL 1, 2010)

A number of unemployed youth in the Upper West Region have benefited from a training programme organised by Youth Alive, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), to enable them to engage in productive ventures and discourage them from begging and hawking in the street.
Apart from the training programmes, the organisation also sensitised the beneficiaries to appreciate the need to build their capabilities, in order to empower them economically.
Significantly, since undertaking this programme, Youth Alive has been able to put smiles on the faces of a number of residents in the region, who are operating small-scale businesses.
At a passing-out ceremony in Wa for 21 beneficiaries including a man, the Regional Programme Manager of Youth Alive, Miss Shirley Kunkyebe, indicated that all the graduates would receive various tools and gadgets such as hair dryers, furniture for their shops, cosmetics, towels, sewing machines and packets of roofing sheets.
This, she explained, was to boost the businesses of the beneficiaries to cater for themselves and their families.
She said her outfit took the graduates through a four-year training programme by engaging them as apprentices with seamstresses, auto mechanics and hair dressers, among others.
During this period, Miss Kunkyebe said, Youth Alive rented rooms and gave the trainees a monthly allowance of GH¢6 and toiletries.
“Youth Alive also registered them under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and paid for their premium,” she said, adding that the next batch of street children to be scouted by Youth Alive would also be sent to these beneficiaries to also learn on the job
The Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Mahmud Khalid, in a speech read on his behalf, advised municipal and district assemblies to support Youth Alive in order to deal with the issue of streetism in the region.
He advised the beneficiaries to be ambassadors of the programme in order to get more people off the streets.
The regional minister touched on the responsibilities of parents and said parents must take full responsibilities for the upbringing of their children, stressing, “We must bring forth the number of children we will be able to cater for.”
He commended Youth Alive for the support and said it was the best way to integrate street children into families and the society.
The Upper West Director of the Department of Children, Mrs Annacleta Naab, advised the graduates against migrating from the north to the south in search of non-existent jobs.
She said when they focused and remained in the region, they could equally access more opportunities than what they would go through when they migrated to the southern part of the country.
She lauded the organisation for its intervention to curb the ritual of seasonal migration of the youth from the north to the south to engage in menial jobs.
One of the beneficiaries, Miss Abubakar Fahima, on behalf of her mates expressed appreciation to Youth Alive and all other stakeholders for the support and training.