Create Opportunities for yourselves - Ebo Whyte

Accra, Mar. 31, GNA - Mr. James Ebo Whyte, a playwright and motivational speaker has called on graduands of the School of Translators and School of Bilingual Secretaryship of the Ghana Institute of Languages (GIL) to create their own opportunities in life instead of waiting to have it handed to them.

Citing a story about a young Ghanaian who travelled to America on a government scholarship, and who, being broke, found a restaurant with a sign that read 'Free meals are served here, your grandchildren will come and pay', and thinking the odds of his grandchildren someday paying that debt were very good, went in and ate his fill, only to be presented a bill, which the waiter said had been left for him by his grandfather,

Mr. Whyte admonished the graduands not to leave debts for their grandchildren to pay someday but to create opportunities for themselves that would make them leave a good legacy for posterity.

He said in order to do this the graduands must be prepared for success.   He said finishing their course at the school was only part of the preparation and that they would need to keep learning, saying 'the more prepared the luckier you are'.

He added that the graduands must also learn to serve with enthusiasm and to embrace all they do wholeheartedly and not just do only enough to stay out of trouble as some people do.

Mr. Whyte also urged them to ensure that they work with integrity so that others can trust and rely on them, have an attitude of humility and be ready to learn from everyone and not to have a mindset of working for money since 'that is not the mindset of a successful person."

'Don't work for money, work for exposure' he stated adding that when dealing with a prospective employer, the question should not be 'how much will you pay me?', but 'how much value will you add to my life?' 'Open your mind to new opportunities. There are endless opportunities and you must be open-minded and go for them' he concluded.

Dr. John Rex Amuzu Gadzekpo, Director of the GIL, said Ghana must not lose sight of the importance of communication in general and language in particular, in the quest to transform the nation since language could be considered a tool for social and economic transformation.

He said it was not surprising that language proficiency was considered as a human capital and was characterized by the three indicators of human capital: it is productive, costly to produce and embodied in the person.

He said that language acquisition was only limited to the foreign European or Asian languages, as was often the case, and emphasised that local language proficiency was equally important. 'A great deal of the socio-economic integration and development of Ghana hinges on our local languages, and it is believed by many that the relative marginalization of these languages in our mainstream economy is responsible for our inability to effectively turn the economy around' he stated.

He noted that although Ghana's official language policy recognized this principle; it needed to be made dynamic and legislative muscle as well institutional and financial backing.   He bemoaned the neglect of the language sector in Ghana and called on Ghanaians to support calls for elevation of the school to a full university status as the GIL was well positioned to deliver the mission of the school.

Miss. Priscillia Adjoa Holdbrook, who graduated with a first class honours degree, won the TOBINCO Excellence Award and the Director's Award for Overall Best Student as well as the L'AINE Services prize for Best graduating student in translation (French to English) and Best graduating student in Spanish.

Other graduands who received Best Graduating Student awards were:   DrameThiermo Ousmane Cheikh Makhfouze-Translation (English to French), Iris Nadia Agosou- Arabic, Beatrice Ohene-Ansah-Portuguese, Christian Lasmothey-German,   and Prisca Aku Yayra Ocloo- Russian, while Niankoun Amoin Nadege won the award for Best Final Year Translation Project.

In her valedictorian speech, Miss Holdbrook, commended her fellow graduands for the hard work over the last four years of their course and urged them to utilize the values they had acquired during the course of their studies including hard work, discipline, and the ability to meet deadlines and to use them to make a difference wherever they find themselves by finding solutions to the problems facing their communities.

GNA