The Sunyani Youth Development Association (SYDA) has held a graduation ceremony for seven vulnerable young people, who successfully underwent employable skills training. The beneficiaries, mostly teenage mothers, went through three-year intensive training in fashion design, automatic mechanics as well as kente and smock weaving. Already, the Association had facilitated 58 other beneficiaries to graduate, making the total number of graduates 65 who had established their own businesses. They also went through diverse training modules, under the Association's Hub Entrepreneurial Training, which comprised cosmetology, make-ups, visual arts, aluminum fabrication, wood technology and bicycle repairs. Speaking at the second graduation ceremony of the Association in Sunyani, Mr Atta Akoto Snr, the President of the SYDA, said 42 trainees were also going through different employable skills training under 10 master craftsmen. He said the ability to retain some of the interested trainees, particularly teenage mothers as a result of lack of support from their families remained a huge challenge, saying 19 trainees were forced to quit because it was difficult for them to undergo the training, while attending to their babies. To address the challenge, he said plans were underway for the construction of a crèche that would absorb such babies to free their mothers to make them productive. 'The crèche is designed to absorb kids of other apprentices who are not directly under the SYDA so that their mothers would be economically empowered while their children also get quality education from the onset,' Mr Akoto added. He expressed appreciation to the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) for supporting the Association with GhC140,000.00 to augment its training equipment and expressed the hope that with the new equipment more young people in the Sunyani Municipality would benefit from the training. One of the graduates, Mary Getty, a fashion designer, expressed appreciation to the SYDA and advised other young people who could not further their education to take advantage and enroll in the training to secure their future.

Source: Ghana News Agency