A Youth Parliament has been launched at the Sagnarigu District of the Northern Region to enable the youth to influence decisions and local level policies through dialogue.

The Youth Parliament, which is modelled on the country’s Parliamentary system, would also serve as a platform for youth of different communities to participate in discussing common issues affecting their communities.

The Youth Parliament is a year’s project being implemented by the Youth Empowerment for Life (YEfL), a non-governmental organization, and supported by STAR-Ghana with funding from the UKaid, DANIDA and European Union.

Other beneficiary districts where the Youth Parliament has been launched include Saboba, Nanumba North, Nanumba South and Yendi Municipality.

The Youth Parliament at Sagnarigu, after its launch had its first parliamentary session where majority and minority sides, moderated by the speaker, debated the issue of poor sanitation in the district.

The youth parliamentarians called on residents of the district to change their attitude and maintain clean environment as well as calling on government to step up its efforts in the sanitation sector to reduce the incidence of disease in the area.

Mr Amadu Zulyaden, Project Officer in-charge of Youth Parliament at YEfL said the concept also aimed at promoting dialogue by affording the young parliamentarians the opportunity to dialogue with duty bearers.

Mr Zulyaden said it was also to promote female and persons with disabilities’ participation by providing equal opportunity for both males and females to contribute positively to societal development by sharing their knowledge and experiences on a common platform.

He said the Saboba, Yendi, Nanumba North and Nanumba South Districts’ Youth Parliaments debated the motions “Falling Standards of Education”, “The Rise of Cyber Crime”, “Poor Academic Performance”, and “Need for a Girls Model JHS in the District to promote Girl-Child Education” in that order in their respective districts.

He was hopeful that the project would groom young persons by building their capacity in public speaking, public discourse/dialogue amongst others to become aspiring assembly persons, members of parliament, presiding members, and politicians or in any other field of leadership through learning by doing.

Mr Zulyaden also spoke about the other components of the Project involving training 25 young persons from the project districts as community journalists to gather information from their communities for discussions by the youth parliamentarians and later broadcast on radios to reach larger audience.