By Dennis Peprah, GNA
Wenchi, (B/R), Feb. 25, GNA – Ghana’s Ambassador to Denmark, Mrs Amerley Ollennu Awua-Asamoa has supported 20 women in the Wenchi Municipality of the Bono Region to engage in employable skills training to enhance their livelihoods.
She collaborated with the Association of African Women in Development (AAWID), a non-governmental organisation to train the women, mostly single mothers in soap-making and detergents during the two day training workshop held at Wenchi.
AAWID works to empower rural women and vulnerable young girls by focusing on advocacy on gender issues – sensitization on women rights including gender-based violence, harmful practices and access to resources and decision issues in the communities.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mrs, Awua-Asamoa explained that she was working hard to explore available opportunities to provide decent jobs for vulnerable women in the country.
She noted that women had huge responsibility to play in the home, but they and children were also the most vulnerable social class of people in the society, and thus required support to become self-reliant.
Mrs Awua-Asamoa said she was working to support the beneficiaries to expand their businesses.
She commended them for availing themselves for the training and advised them to form cooperatives to boost their economic activities.
Mrs Awua-Asamoa emphasised that record keeping and savings were very essential for successful entrepreneurship and urged them to reduce spending on frivolous activities by investing any little profit they made back into their business to sustain it.
Registered in 2001, Mrs Awua-Asamoa explained that the AAWID worked to promote social justice, gender equity and child development through opportunities for self-sufficiency.
It aims to become efficient vehicle of change in promoting participation of rural women and youth in the socio-economic development of the nation.
Currently, AAWID activities are centered in the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions and operates a network of community activities for the vulnerable, especially women and the youth to develop their entrepreneurial skills in income generating activities.
It carries out family life education, sexual and reproductive health education, including women’s health, HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Tuberculosis and malaria prevention activities and campaigns.
Many of the beneficiaries who spoke during an open forum, expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the AAWID and the Embassy for the assistance, and appealed for more support to enable them to also engage and train other colleagues.
GNA