The Director of the GhanaThink Foundation, Ato Ulzen-Appiah, is urging young people to take skills and professional development seriously.
Mr. Ulzen-Appiah said if young people within Africa are not skilled, despite the large youthful African population, individuals from other continents with the relevant skills would take decent jobs that would have been available for those within the continent.
“We need our youth to be more skilled. Especially in countries on the continent of Africa, where the youth are a huge percent of the population, we need a majority of that population to be skilled and be able to be competent, perform a lot of different tasks so that we don’t have others from other continents doing this for us,” Mr. Ulzen-Appiah said when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
His comments were in line with the recent celebration of World Youth Skills Day.
The Director of the GhanaThink Foundation continued to say that if more young people are skilled, it can serve as a source of reference for others that “if you are skilled, you can do well. You can make money. You can get better jobs and run better businesses.”
Mr. Ulzen-Appiah challenged the stakeholders within the education sector to include soft skills in the current curriculum, saying, “I know in Ghana we talk very little about soft skills but we need to talk about that even more. For these soft skills, the first thing has to do with attitude. Being able to network with people so that you can get information from them and you can get opportunities from them is also important.”
He said that while opportunities abound, there are many young people who are not properly positioned to take advantage, re-emphasizing the need to build skills.
Mr. Ulzen-Appiah encouraged young people across the country to join clubs and associations that prioritize skills development. The GhanaThink Foundation, he said, is an organization that prioritizes the training of young people while also sharing opportunities with them.
The GhanaThink Foundation is a social enterprise. This means the organization does work similar to other non-governmental organizations but runs as a business. The Foundation runs youth-oriented programmes across the country. The focus of the programmes are mentorship, networking, volunteering, and training.
In 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared 15 July as World Youth Skills Day, to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship.
The theme for World Youth Skills Day 2024, “Youth Skills for Peace and Development,” underscores the crucial role young people play in peacebuilding and conflict resolution.
According to the UN General Assembly, “the world faces a multitude of challenges today, many of which affect the youth. Violent conflicts disrupting education and stability, a polarized online environment fostering negativity, and persistent economic inequality limit opportunities. These issues threaten not only individual futures but also the overall stability of societies. It is crucial to equip youth with the necessary skills for fostering a culture of peace, nurturing responsible global citizens, and promoting sustainable development to build a more just, inclusive, and sustainable future for all.”
Source: A1Radioonline.Com|101.1MHZ|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Bolgatanga|
I would love to join ThinkGhana
We really need to take advantage of the opportunities of the moment.
Thanks for sharing.