Youth empowerment project to be launched soon

Hohoe, Aug. 30, GNA - A uniquely designed youth-led, Ghana Youth Unite Project, committed to exploring the arts to promote education and empowerment of young people devoid of ethnic stereotypes is to be launched soon.

The Ghana Youth Unite Project which is to integrate, build cohesion and foster unity among the youth would be piloted in the Volta and Ashanti Regions, and replicated throughout the country and beyond.

Mamaga Ngoyifiaga Akosua I, Paramount Queen of SASADU Traditional Areas comprising Saviefe, Alavanyo, Sovie and Akrofu and President of the Project, told the Ghana News Agency that she conceived the idea after series of interactions with young people across the country, who thought that the country was being polarised on the ethos of politics, ethnicity and cultural lines.

She said young people were disillusioned and frustrated by the ethnocentric hatred and tensions being generated especially by politicians, opinion leaders and social commentators.

Mamaga Akosua, a German, known in private life as Cornelia von Wulfing said the country's fledgling democracy, touted as a beacon of hope for Africa could be compromised when these negative tendencies were not shirked to promote tolerance and oneness, a recipe for rapid development.

Sharing the bitter memory of a country separated by the Berlin Wall, the former East and West Germany, she said, that experience should not re-emerge in the slightest bit in any form or part of the world.

Mamaga Akosua noted that many young people suffer from the negative consequences of illiteracy, poor education, ignorance and lack of employable skills making them vulnerable to social vices including armed robbery, cyber fraud, poverty, disease and drug menace, which are catalyst to the development of the youth and society.

She said the project would explore factors that caused detachment of the youth from their family ties and communities, which are ingredients for youth vulnerability, disengagement and community disempowerment.

Quoting Martin Luther King was certainly right when he said “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” she added.

Mr Appiah-Danquah Kufuor, an Economic Development Consultant and Executive Secretary of the Project said the project would empower the youth to take charge of the social changes in their communities through the arts, education and entrepreneurship.

“It would encourage the youth to be more assertive in order to face the challenges of the 21st Century and beyond,” he added.

Mr Kufuor who is also a board member of the newly constituted Volta Region Development Agency said the project would provide the youth of Ghana with significant opportunities to engage in community activities, and avenues to channel their intellectual ambitions into proactive ventures towards national integration and coherence.

He said it would entail exchange programmes, art and cultural expositions, sports, writing and reading workshops towards inculcating nationalism in the next generation of leaders.

GNA