Nii Boi Kojo II and TADS students
In a historic collaboration between traditional authorities and a creative institution, the Gbawe Mantse, Nii Boi Kojo II, and TADS Fashion Institute have jointly awarded fifty percent tuition scholarships to twenty young people from the Gbawe community.
The scholarships, valued at GH¢8,000 per student and worth a combined GH¢160,000, grants each recipient access to internationally benchmarked fashion and design training.
The scholarships were announced during the Gbawe Alokoto Homowo Festival, one of the community’s most significant cultural gatherings.
Nii Boi Kojo II hosted TADS Fashion Institute at the festival grounds, where the institution mounted an exhibition and delivered hands-on fashion training sessions for community members. The initiative transformed the festival into more than a cultural celebration — it became a live platform for skills discovery, offering young people firsthand exposure to the craft, creativity, and career possibilities in fashion and textile design.
According to organisers, the decision to integrate vocational education into the Homowo festival was deliberate, signaling that the future of Gbawe’s youth is a matter of traditional concern, not just individual aspirations.
TADS Fashion Institute, founded in 2018, has since trained nearly three hundred graduates — over eighty percent of them women — through its Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET)-accredited diploma and vocational programmes in fashion design, garment construction, textile design, leatherwork, and fashion entrepreneurship.
The institute currently operates sixteen active apprenticeship centres across the country and has extended outreach to underserved groups, including head porters at Tema Station, survivors of trafficking, and young people with disabilities.
“TADS Fashion Institute does not train students for certificates. We train them for life — for the ability to create, to build, to employ themselves and others,” said Mr. Eric Grundberry Aidoo-Gabrah, Founder and Executive Director of TADS Fashion Institute.
Each of the twenty beneficiaries will undertake a full fashion and design training programme and graduate with a CTVET-recognised qualification, a portfolio of work, and practical skills to enter Ghana’s fashion and textile industry, launch independent enterprises, or access international creative markets.
Both Nii Boi Kojo II and TADS Fashion Institute say the scholarship initiative is not intended to be a one-off act of generosity. The two parties have opened formal discussions on establishing a main campus of TADS Fashion Institute within Gbawe — a permanent presence that would make high-quality, internationally benchmarked fashion education continuously accessible to the youth without barriers of distance, transport cost, or institutional unfamiliarity.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke
