Yendi, (N/R), Sept 8, GNA - Mr Mohammed Habib Tijani, Yendi District Chief Executive, has expressed the readiness of the district assembly to collaborate with other partners to ensure integrated development of the area on sustainable basis.

Mr Tijani, who was addressing an annual "Facilitators Day" of the School for Life (SFL), a Danish non-governmental organisation operating in the Northern Region, assured facilitators who meet the basic requirements for entry into teacher training colleges that the assembly would sponsor them.

He told them to take advantage of remedial facilities to better their grades to qualify for teacher training colleges. In an address Madam Dorte Jergensen, SFL Coordinator, said her organization had since its inception in 1995 trained 50,000 children from eight districts in the Northern Region to become functionally literate.

She said out of this number 31,000 had been integrated into the formal education system and that SFL had started training 100 teachers in the formal sector and 30 circuit supervisors in the Gushiegu and Yendi districts of the Northern Region.

Mr Abdulai Ziblim, Area Coordinator of SFL, commended the Yendi District Assembly for its contribution to the success of the NGO's programmes in the area.

He appealed to the beneficiary communities to support the facilitators in cash or in kind to enable them to give off their best. In all 26 facilitators were honoured for their hard work and dedication to duty that has enabled a good number of children to be integrated into the formal school system.

They received cash awards, bicycles, cutlasses and "T" shirts. 08 Sept. 03