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About 166 participants from the social enterprise sector yesterday took part in the 5th edition of the Ghana Social Enterprise Forum held in Accra.
They included policy makers, government officials, the investor community, academia, research institutions, and social entrepreneurs.
The aim of the forum is to provide a platform for the participants to brainstorm and come up with ways on how to equip the youth with needed skills to enable them to compete on the global market and also contribute to the country’s socio-economic growth.
Organised by Social Enterprise Ghana, the forum was under the theme, “Developing skills for impact: Training the next generation of change-makers in Ghana”, and had topics on financing, skills development, and regulatory and quality assurance systems.
The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, in a speech read on his behalf by the Principal Programme Officer for Inclusive Education, Mrs Wilma Titus-Glover, said the theme resonated with the government’s aspiration of promoting inclusive education in the country.
He stated that education remained the cornerstone of the country’s developmental agenda, adding that the Education Ministry would continue to promote an all-inclusive and skill-based education as it had been at the forefront of skills development through the Free SHS and TVET education.
The Executive Director of Social Enterprise Ghana, Mr Edwin Zu-Cudjoe said technical and vocational education offered students an opportunity to showcase their creative skills and earn a good income.
Mr Zu-Cudjoe, therefore, urged the youth not to shy away or lose interest in technical and vocational education but rather embrace and take the opportunity to develop their skill sets and dispelled the negative notion often attached to technical and vocational education in the country.
He also expressed gratitude to the various partners that had partnered with Social Enterprise Ghana to train the youth in various technical and vocational skills over the years.
For his part, the Director General of the Ghana TVET Service, Mr David Prah, in a speech read on his behalf by the Acting Director (Operations), Assessment and Quality Assurance, Mr Osei Kofi, said 60,481 learners were recruited during the 2024 academic year under the current TVET transformation agenda.
In addition, he noted that, there had been an integration of entrepreneurship into the current educational curricula to empower students to create jobs for themselves.
Mr Prah also called for continued collaboration between stakeholders and actors to create a skilled workforce that drives fairness, economic growth, and social progress.
The Director and Head of Cooperation, High Commission of Canada, Kathleen Flynn-Dapaah, emphasised the importance of gender equity and women’s empowerment, citing it as crucial for achieving equitable and inclusive development in the country.
To address the existing skills training gap, she said two women’s economic empowerment initiatives had been developed to provide targeted skills training in non-traditional sectors such as carpentry, masonry and plumbing for young women in TVET programmes.
BY CYNTHIA ASAMPANA
