By
Dennis Peprah, GNA
Wenchi (B/R), Feb.
26, 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 – sensitisation 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 she was
working hard to explore available opportunities to provide decent jobs for
vulnerable women in the country.
She noted that women
had a 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 tirelessly 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 would make back into their business to sustain
it.
Registered in 2001,
Mrs Awua-Asamoa explained 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 centred 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 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