Edwenase Rehab Centre in need of financial support
The Edwenase Rehabilitation Centre was established in 1958 to provide vocational training for the visually hearing impaired, as well as those who suffer from mobility or learning difficulties in the city of Kumasi and other communities in the Ashanti Region.
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It was first established in Kwadaso in 1958 and in 1974, the city council changed the location to its present site at Edwenase, on the outskirts of the city, with the initial aim of taking people with disabilities off the streets and providing care for them at the centre.
However, after consultations with the Department of Social Welfare, it was agreed to include families of inmates in the process by sensitising and working with them to deal with their children’s needs.
Children with disability
The centre identifies children with disabilities - including those with hearing, visual, movement and learning difficulties, registers them and brings them to Edwenase for vocational training in carpentry, electronics, woodcarving, soapmaking, agriculture.
Currently, the centre provides training in needlework, dressmaking, tailoring, shoemaking, hairdressing and beautification, rural craft courses for the students who live at the facility.
In addition to this, it has a farm where maize, oranges, plantain, yam and banana are cultivated.
Due to the excellent potentials of the students and the positive level of government concern, trainees who completed courses over the years were given employment in order to raise their status in society.
The centre’s operations are funded by the government and it also obtains funds from corporate organisations, individual donors and volunteers. The centre also organises trade fairs where people purchase products from their farm.
According to the manager of the centre, Mr Modesto Ayurode, the institution has the capacity in terms of facilities and staff to enrol and train more persons with disabilities but the dwindling financial support has become a hindrance, and as such the centre, which is supposed to be funded wholly by the government, has been depending on the benevolence of some philanthropic organisations and individuals for operations.
What had compounded the problem, he said, was the inability of some parents and guardians to provide the needed financial assistance for their children and wards.
Mr Ayurode said one of the viable ventures of the centre was the Leather and Shoe Works Department, which had a bright prospect of generating income to sustain itself but it lacked a factory, so it could not produce on a large scale.
GWCL Ladies Association
As part of efforts to resource the centre, the Ashanti Regional branch of the Ladies Association of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has presented some items to the Edwenase Rehabilitant Centre in Kumasi.
This is not the first time the association is resourcing the centre. The last time it did so was two years ago, when as part of activities marking its 25th anniversary the association showed its benevolence to support the centre.
The items, valued at GHC4,300.00, included a bag of sugar, five bags of rice, a bag of beans, a bag of gari, three boxes of Lipton Tea, four boxes of non-alcoholic beverages and assorted sweets.
Others were a bag of second-hand clothing, four boxes of bars of soap, two packs of toilet rolls, two containers of washing powder, five cartons of disinfectant and two containers of bleach.
At a presentation ceremony, the Chairperson of the association, Mrs Henrietta Owners Konrad, who led members to make the donation, said the well-being of the inmates was dear to the heart of members and they could not sit back and watch the needy go hungry.
She emphasised that as far as the association was in place, there was hope that donations to the centre would continue and asked other associations to also come to the support of the centre.
Gratitude
Mr Ayiwoli, on behalf of the staff of the centre and the Department of Social Welfare, expressed his appreciation and gratitude to the association for the gesture.
He recalled that when the centre was confronted with an acute water shortage five years ago, the association, through the GWCL, came to the support of the centre and called on other individual groups, churches and associations to emulate the example of the association and come to its aid.
He added that the centre “goes on break every four months, and has 75 inmates, 45 males and 30 females, receiving rehabilitation training.”
He said admission was still in progress and, indicated that but for the lack of resources, the centre could accommodate about 350 inmates to receive vocational training in dressing making, tailoring, rural craft, hair dressing, shoe making and leather works, beads and arts within a tentatively three-year period.
