Hon Abass Fuseini Sbaabe, DCE for Fanteakwa District has established an NGO called Skills Transfer And Empowerment Project (STEP) at New Akyem Tafo aimed to help transfer skills to the youth and make them independent.
The organization has two departments now, such as Fashion Designing and ICT as More departments are to be established to serve the varied interest of the youth.
The center offers free training in Fashion Designing for the youth – tailoring, dressmaking and embroidering as It is equipped with modern machines to make teaching and learning of these skills very easy.
STEP is currently going into other farming ventures to train the youth in beekeeping, snail and grass-cuter farming and other life skills as working in tendon with the government to develop the skills of the youth and make them employable.
The main aim of the organization is to prepare the youth to depend on themselves for their own survival instead of constantly expecting non-existent support from family members.
Hon Abass Fuseini Sbaabe in an interview said” I believe in people building their skills and fending for themselves that waiting for white color jobs’.
He reiterated that” I was a fashion designer from infancy, at age of 14, I have mastered the art and I was teaching others. I learned from my father and he sent me to Kumasi to specialize in embroidering as well, adding that I still do it from time to time, though i work as DCE.
”All the African dresses I wear are from the workshop” as he stated.
He averred that, I had training as an embroiderer in my early years and I worked to support my father to cater for my education and the education of my children, After my sixth form education when i needed to enter the university, there was nobody to support since my father had passed away.
” I started working as a tailor and an embroider in Begoro, With time, my workshop became the biggest fashion designing shop in Fanteakwa whereI brought as many family members as possible and taught them the skills, as he hinted.
He further disclosed that ” It became a big time family business and we named it ECOMOG Fashion because we saw ourselves as fighters to liberate our family from poverty whereas four years after running the workshop, I handed it over to my junior brothers and entered the university as I footed the bills involved in my university education with proceeds from ECOMOG Fashion.
The suffered DCE hinted that the workshop develop the skills of about ten people who are gaining employed now, adding that it is from this experience that I thought the best thing to do to reduce the rate of unemployment in the system is to help as many people as possible to learn skills and to receive some start up kits to enable them set up their own workshops to make meaningful living.
”That is the brain behind the establishment of an NGO to go into these areas and to help people to acquire skills at no cost to the family, though the workshop currently buys all the materials needed by the apprentices to learn the trade, which i invites all stakeholders to support said the Fanteakwa DCE.
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