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Ms Anita Harriet Abaidoo speaking at the launch of her initiative.
Ms Anita Harriet Abaidoo speaking at the launch of her initiative.

Okaikoi South CPP candidate launches initiative to train youth

The Convention People’s Party (CPP) Parliamentary Candidate for the Okaikoi South Constituency in the Greater Accra Region, Ms Anita Harriet Abaidoo, has launched an initiative to train the youth in the constituency in vocational skills.

The project targets street children, unemployed graduates, school dropouts and teenage mothers in the constituency to train them in soap and yoghurt production, rabbit rearing and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

The first in the series of the project, which will span one month, will be facilitated by graduates from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and Alltech Training Institute of Technology.

Providing livelihoods 

At the launch of the initiative, dubbed “Team Anita Skills Development Initiative,” Ms Abaidoo said the beneficiaries would be provided with start-up kits to enable them to make good use of the newly acquired skills.

With 10 people already being trained in ICT, she said the project was targeting more than 100 trainees by the end of the one month. 

To get the people to participate in the project, she said the team would move to the various markets, lorry stations and churches within the constituency to reach out to the people. 

She explained further that the project was mainly to provide the youth in the constituency with a means of livelihood, especially the street children who mostly turned out to be the ‘pickpockets’ and ‘armed robbers.’

Having associated herself with most of the street children for the past six years through an evangelism project within the community, Ms Abaidoo said the children who had grown into young men and women had potential, hence, the need to help them explore it.

Project-based campaign

Instead of abandoning and stigmatising them, she said such initiatives could enable the street children, teenage mothers and others to secure a vocation from which they could earn income.

In the long term, she said, “we intend to move beyond this constituency to provide a livelihood for the youth who are not working to reduce the unemployment challenge we have as a country”.  

Additionally, Ms Abaidoo indicated that the initiative was also to promote made–in-Ghana products. 

She also noted that the project formed part of her campaign to win the race and added that “it is best to go with project-based campaigns”.

“I believe a project-based campaign is the best to do the talking and action. Also, I believe that a campaign should be project-based so that even if you win or lose, I can still continue with it for the benefit of the youth in my community,” she stated.

An elder of the CPP, Mr Baffour Kwabena Senkyire, commended Ms Abaidoo for her vision to create jobs through the vocational training programme.

He advised the youth, especially those who had graduated from the tertiary schools, not to depend on white-collar jobs but learn a vocation which they could practise and earn incomes from. 

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