Kumasi, Dec 7, GNA - The Ashanti New Town Seventh-Day Adventist SDA) Church in Kumasi realised 35 million cedis on Saturday at a fund-raising harvest to complete their new church building.

Their target was, however, 100 million cedis.

Speaking at the ceremony, Odeneho Kwaku Appiah, Immediate-Past President of the Youth in Action and chairman for the occasion, appealed to churches to channel a good proportion of their resources into the establishment of technical and vocational institutions for the training of the unemployed youth to acquire employable skills.

He noted that such a strategy was crucial because it was when the youth acquired skills that they could either become self-employed or get jobs in the formal sector and thereby be in a position to contribute more meaningfully to the development programmes of the church and society.

Odeneho Appiah expressed regret that, even though, the majority of the members of churches were the youth most of them lacked the capacity to contribute financially to programmes initiated by the church because they were unemployed.

"Churches too should seriously consider supporting members to create and undertake income-generating activities to improve upon their economic situation", he said.

He said until the youth became gainfully employed, it would be difficult for churches to achieve their mission of bringing physical, social and spiritual development to bear on communities.

Odeneho Appiah urged the affluent not to focus their attention on spending huge sums of monies on only social gatherings and funerals but to extend such funds into supporting the poor of the church.

Elder Kwame Amponsah Sekyere, Chairman of the harvest committee of the church, entreated members of the church not to end their assistance to the church after the fund-raising harvest but to continue to make donations until the completion of the church building.