Mr. Moses Dramani Luri, Executive Director of Social Initiative for Literacy and Development Programme (SILDEP), said there should be a more aggressive push towards providing young people with skills that would make employable.

This was the way to go to make their lives meaningful to themselves and society.  He was speaking at a trainer of trainees workshop for the ‘Girls Advocacy Alliance (GAA) project’ held in Wa. The four-year project has a global vision of assisting to empower about one million girls to lead, learn and decide on their own.

Mr. Luri applauded the decision to appoint a Deputy Minister with responsibility for TVET alongside the creation of regional and district offices and said “this is a move in the right direction”.  He asked that skills training centres should be adequately equipped to properly function.

He reminded duty-bearers to be creative in order to ensure optimal use of limited resources to deliver the desired outcomes.  Lack of employable skills among the youth, early and forced marriages, and child abuse, have been identified the major challenges confronting the people.

He said the most powerful weapon to fight these was advocacy and that was why the GAA project implemented by Plan Ghana in partnership with SILDEP and with sponsorship from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs was important.

Madam Anna N. Nabere, the GAA Project Officer for Plan Ghana, said the goal was to create equal opportunities for girls and young women.

“We are to work to empower these girls that are living in rural communities without hope of getting support from anywhere.”  She said structures would be put in place to help promote the rights of girls and young women.

These would include working with traditional and religious leaders in the beneficiary communities and formation of community child protection committees to identify cases of abuse and facilitate the process of reporting to child protection agencies.

Girls clubs to be mentored by teachers and Girl Child Education Officers, to build their capacity to understand some of the issues they were going through and how they could effectively deal with them would also be formed.

She noted that the tools developed, if appropriately used, would empower girls to become assertive, confident and to be able to communicate. “When this happen, they will be able to stand up for themselves against any abuse and also stay in school to complete and become responsible people in society,” Madam Anna added.