Youth Without Borders builds capacity of Tafo Municipal Youth Committee

Youth Without Borders Ghana (YWB), a youth-oriented CSO with support from Youth Opportunity and Transformation in Africa (YOTA), has organised training for the Old Tafo Municipal Youth Committee.

This was aimed at equipping the committee members in leadership and development to deliver on their mandate.

Speaking at the event the Ag. Executive Director, Samuel Gariba highlighted that young people need to be front liners in solving problems they face, the reason which such a survey was necessary and timely.

Richard Apau, a lecturer, social commentator and board member of YWB added that the committee needs to explore community resources, both human, business and natural resources including the MP, banks, religious organizations and other stakeholders of youth development and designing suitable programmes that will bring hope to the youth and help achieve responsible citizenship.

As established by article 23 of the NYA Act 939 (2016), the committee is composed of the NYA district director, the coordinating director, as well as other youth-relevant departments of MMDAs such as education, health and social welfare, community development, sports and a representative of the PWDs.

The training was conducted after developmental issues raised in a survey conducted by YOTA and YWB before the 2020 elections under the ‘My Voice My Vote Campaign’ project which sought the views of young people on what areas of youth development they wished the next government to prioritize.

A total of 11,105 young people participated in the survey nationwide out of which employment, education and health were voted as most important needs.

After discussing the outcome of the survey, YWB led the Committee to design a roadmap for its implementation in the municipality.

In his closing remarks, the Chair of the Youth Committee, Mr Kelvin Baffour said, “This has been a learning platform for us to know how to confront the problems of young people in our community. We were not active because we did not know what you have taught us today.”

As part of the dissemination of the outcome, radio discussions were held to reach stakeholders at the community level on what young people expect from duty bearers.