Janet Serwaa Setugah and her colleague operating a wielding machine at the AVTI 2

One hundred and sixty students of the Akyem Vocational and Technical Institute (AVTI) at New Abirem in the Eastern Region have benefitted from the Newmont Akyem Development Foundation (NAkDeF).

The aim was to provide the students with the necessary entrepreneurial skills that would make them self-suf­ficient and enable them to start their own businesses to employ others.

The training was oganised by Newmont Gold Corp Ghana in collab­oration with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), an International enterprise, under its Akyem Skills Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (A-SEED) programme.

The programme was to improve the unemployment situation of about 600 youth in the Akyem mines host com­munities, of which 35 per cent were females.

The 160 youth underwent technical and vocational training in differ­ent courses, including welding and fabrication, masonry, plumbing and electricals.

The Community Development Man­ager and Executive Secretary of the NAkDeF, Mr Paul Apenu, told the me­dia during a tour of the project that since the inception of the programme in 2022, about 256 students have so far been enrolled on the programme.

That, he said, would help to reduce the high unemployment rate in the area and the country as a whole. He revealed that a 35 per cent target has been allotted to females to encourage them to enrol on the vocational and technical training programme.

“We have strict standards in terms of ensuring equitable distribution between males and females. Our target is to get at least 35 per cent of female students within the communi­ties to enrol.

He noted that the women were encouraged to acquire vocational and technical skills to be self-employed in areas perceived to be male-domi­nated.

Mr Apenu advised the women to overcome such perceptions and take advantage of the opportunity offered them to acquire such skills to enable them get meaningful source of income that would make them self-sufficient.

He also mentioned the establish­ment of the Pempamsie Co-operative Credit Union as another component of the A-SEED programme, revealing that it currently had 2,629 mem­bers and has mobilised about GH¢20 million as well as given loans totalling GH¢3,7 million in disbursement to 497 members of which GH¢2.8miilion was repaid.

Mr Apenu indicated that all those interventions under the programme were to reduce unemployment in their host communities to help reduce poverty.

A student studying welding and fabrication at the AVTI, Janet Serwaa Setugah, encouraged females to enrol at the institute, and said that al­though the males were more in taking up such courses, she felt encouraged to sign onto the course.

Ms Setugah said it was fun to learn and hoped that at the end of the course she would set up her own garage.

She encouraged other women to also come on board to change the nar­rative that the area was male-domi­nated.  

From Ama Tekyiwaa Ampadu Agyeman, New Abirem