Capacity building is key to youth leadership and development. It is in this regard that Youth Without Borders Ghana (YWB), a youth-oriented CSO with support from Youth Opportunity and Transformation in Africa (YOTA), collaborated with the Old Tafo Municipal Youth Committee to build the capacity of the committee members to deliver on their mandate.
As established by article 23 of the NYA Act 939 (2016), the committee is composed of NYA district director, the coordinating director, as well as other youth-relevant departments of MMDAs such as education, health and social welfare, community development, sports and a representative of the PWDs.
The activity emanated from a survey conducted by YOTA together YWB in the run-up to the 2020 general elections under My Voice My Vote Campaign project which sought the views of young people on what areas of youth development they wished the next government to prioritize. A total of 11,105 young people participated in the survey nationwide out of employment, education and health were voted as most important needs of young people (see https://mvmv.yotaweb.org).
Speaking at the event the Ag. Executive Director, Samuel Gariba highlighted that young people needs to be frontliners in solving problems they face, the reason which such a survey was necessary and timely. Richard Apau, a lecturer, social commentator and board member of YWB added that, the committee needs to explore community resources, both human, business and natural resources including the MP, banks, religious organizations and other stakeholders of youth development and designing suitable programs that will bring hope to the youth and help achieve responsible citizenship.
After discussing the outcome of the survey, YWB led the Committee to design a roadmap for its implementation in the municipality. In his closing remarks, the chair of the Youth Committee, Mr. Kelvin Baffour, said “This has been a learning platform for us to know how to confront the problems of young people in our community. We were not active because we did not know what you have taught us today.”
As part of the dissemination of the outcome, a radio discussion was held earlier on Akoma Fm to reach stakeholders at the community level on what young people expect from duty bearers.
