Danish development partners known as the Friends of Tamale Youth Home Cultural Group, is investing in the training of young artisans in Tamale to become self-reliant.
This is to augment the Tamale Youth Home Cultural Group’s desire to give interested persons vocational training in fashion and designing.
The two groups jointly established the Tamale Cultural Tour Centre to promote tourism and create jobs.
Six of the beneficiaries who underwent intensive training in batik, tie and dye, material bags and smocks designing have graduated.
Each person received a certificate, a brand new sewing machine and other tools needed for their vocation.
At the maiden graduation ceremony, Chairperson of the Friends of Tamale Youth Home Cultural Group, Professor Emerita Lise Drewed Nielsen, entreated the trainees to rediscover themselves in the competitive job market.
“I expect that they will also start sewing in their little corner on a table and with perseverance and determination they will be able to grow in the years to come.”
She said her group would mobilize enough funding to sustain the programme.
“More of such training would be given to many young people in the Tamale Metropolis in the coming years as and when we get funding from individual members of the association in Denmark.”
Another Member of the Danish group, Annemarie Gruner, bemoaned lack of adequate information on Ghana’s tourism potentials within the scheme of global affairs.
“Often when people in Denmark want to come to Africa and they decide to google about countries to visit, the countries that come up on the internet search engines are those in East and Southern Africa.”
Madam Annemarie underscored the need for the Ghana government to attach importance to the nation’s tourism potentials.
Director of the Tamale Youth Home Cultural Group, who doubles as Manager of the Tamale Cultural Tour Centre, Abdul Rahaman Mohammed, commended the Danish partners for the continuous support.
According to him, the Danish group has trained staff of the Tamale Youth Home Cultural Group to serve as change Ambassadors in the tourism sector.
“Our staff have been trained to understand how they can promote local tourism by serving as professional tour guides to locals and foreigners.”
“There are a lot of things about our culture that we didn’t know, but through the collaboration with our friends from Denmark we have learned those things and it’s helping us to do our work very well.”
He said, “Apart from entertaining people including foreign tourists through music and dance, now we’re able to tell them the history of Ghana, important places such as our chiefs’ palaces, market places and other cultural and heritage sites which we didn’t understand before the training.”
As Chairman for the occasion, a former Northern Regional Director of the National Population Council, Chief Issahaku Alhassan Amadu, urged the youth to be industrious.
“Young people whether educated or not must on regular basis learn something in addition to what they already know so that wherever they find themselves they can be useful to society.”
Chief Alhassan Amadu further admonished the youth to shun social vices such as drug abuse, illicit sex and violence.
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By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana