Christian group supports 51 rural women to start business
Vocational Skills for Women (VTF), a Christian institution, has presented 51 rural young women with assorted equipment to start up their own business as a means of empowering them to cater for their families.
The items estimated at GH¢32,000, included hair dressing kits, batik tye and dye, spraying, beads designing and interior and exterior decoration equipment, to beneficiaries drawn from Abokobi, Oyarifa, Bio, Teiman, Kasoa Nyanyanor, Ofankor and Mataheko near Afienya at a ceremony in Accra.
In addition to the equipment, the beneficiaries would be taken through three months period of basic business management training to build up their capacities to manage and sustain their businesses for the intended purpose.
Mr Seth Appiah, a Senior Programs Officer of VTF, who presented the equipment, said the VTF support was to empower young women to have sources of income to reduce poverty in the rural communities.
He said VTF was of the view that women empowerment was key to reducing poverty and solving many social problems that impeded national development and had since its establishment been committed to that cause and hoped that the equipment would be put to good use.
The VTF was established by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG), in partnership with Church Development Services (EED), Germany, as a response to youth unemployment, particularly among rural women in Ghana.
The VTF Programe core objective is to promote Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) as a means to employment creation in Ghana and with the challenges of the TVET, the VTF had worked on a number of interventions since its establishment for positive labour outcomes.
Some of the challenges that the VTF had worked on to improve at all levels of TVET education was the advocacy for the inclusion of Mathematics and English as essential skills to be considered as core subjects for that area of educational training.
The National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) subsequently adopted the English, Mathematics and Entrepreneurship skills curriculums developed by the VTF during the advocacy, as subjects being used for all Vocational and Technical institutions in Ghana.
Source: GNA