Youth and Women Empowerment (YOWE), a Youth and Women-Centered NGO, with sponsorship from the STAR-Ghana Foundation, under the Action for Voice and Inclusive Development (AVID) has embarked on an ambitious task to train various groups free of charge aimed at empowering them with the requisite knowledge and skills to ply their to improve livelihoods.

The project is a 15-Month strategy designed to guide the beneficiaries towards applying the acquired requisite knowledge and practical skills to alleviate poverty, thereby placing them in the position to support themselves, their dependents and the larger society.

The GH₵ 300,000 funded project to be executed within fifteen months in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality and Upper Manya Krobo District in the Eastern Region has offered the implementers a unique platform to empower various groups including Women Farmer-Based Groups, Persons with Disabilities (PWD) and Market Women in terms of proper organization of their trade to reap maximum benefits.

As part of the objectives of the project to address sanitation challenges confronting market women at the Agormanya and Asesewa markets, YOWE in collaboration with various stakeholders including the two Districts (Lower Manya Krobo Municipal and Upper Manya Krobo District) and sanitation giants, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, will ensure sound sanitation, hygiene and food safety at the markets.

To ensure that PWDs put the livelihood empowerment items given them by the local Assemblies to judicious use, YOWE will as part of the project also monitor how beneficiaries manage the items for their economic gains.

The groups were thus trained in records keeping, entrepreneurship, financial management and leadership at various workshops held in the two districts.

Summarizing the intended outcome of the project, the Executive Director for the Youth and Women Empowerment (YOWE), Mr. Emmanuel Nuetey Siakwa noted that the three groups would be properly equipped with the required skills to place them in a strategic position to run their businesses efficiently for improved livelihoods.

“These three groups when well empowered, will see their businesses/economic activities well-organized so that at the end of the day, they’ll be able to get some profits to enable them make some savings”, said the Executive Director.

According to him, the various groups would also be supported to register with District Assemblies as business entities to give them competitive advantage towards accessing several benefits. Mr. Siakwa said, “We want to see a situation where all these groups are registered and operated as formal cooperatives to be able to access resources, technical and many other benefits.”
According him, taking bad financial decisions adversely affect many business persons with many of them running out of businesses, adding that subsequent follow-ups would be undertaken to ensure that the beneficiaries are applying the contents of the training and reflecting in their overall business expansion for improved standard of living.

He urged the participants to take the training seriously to enable them reap the benefits of their labour by empowering themselves financially for the larger benefit of their families and society.

A beneficiary of the training and chairman of the Lower Manya Krobo PWD Group, Mr. Solomon Sackitey in an interview admitted that the exercise enlightened them on various issues pertaining to how to effectively run their businesses/ economic ventures.

He called for more of such engagements to educate and equip them with the relevant knowledge and practical skills to improve their work, adding that ignorance of their members on most of the topics contributed to losses recorded in the past.

Madam Veronica Annor, a Market Queen for the Mat Sellers at the Agormanya market who also participated in the training noted that the workshop opened new chapters in their business activities and urged her compatriots to put the knowledge acquired to use.