Collaborate to implement Youth Policy —Tamakloe-Attionu

The National Youth Authority (NYA) has called for wider collaboration between the authority and the various youth-led groups in the country for the effective implementation of the National Youth Policy.
According to the NYA, the tenets of the policy were very critical to achieving the benefits of a demographic window, hence the collaboration.

This was contained in a statement signed by the National Co-ordinator of the NYA, Mrs Sedina Tamakloe Attionu, who is in transition to the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre, to commemorate the African Union Youth Day,  which falls today, November 1.

The celebration is on the theme, “Africa‘s Youth Population: Opportunity or Threat: Reaping the Benefits of the Demographic window, The Future We want for Ghana.”

According to the statement, the concept of the “demographic window” is a conscious multi-disciplinary, as well as multi-sectoral, approach to systematically positioning youth leadership and participation as a development theory.

It called for the promotion of peer-to-peer grass-roots empowerment programmes, especially in health and functional education, the provision and acquisition of sustainable livelihood opportunities within specific co-ordinated environmental management frameworks and access to reproductive health and rights services.

“In furtherance of that, concerted efforts need to be galvanised to build youth capacity for governance and strengthen advocacy for relevant political will and decisions on youth development,” it said.

The NYA, therefore, called on all youth-led and focused stakeholders to join forces to ensure that the youth and Africa as a whole became an opportunity and well- harnessed potential for a better Ghana on a prosperous African continent.

The statement emphasised that Ghana’s ratification of the African Youth Charter, as well as her subscription to the African Youth Decade (2009-2018) plan of Action as implementable parameters for achieving a demographic dividend, derived from the National Youth Policy framework, which provides room for wider youth involvement in wider social, political and national aspirations founded on access, equity and meaningful participatory leadership.

Daily Graphic/Ghana