Takoradi Aug. 12, GNA - Miss Ekua Ansah-Eshon, National Coordinator of the World's Children's Prize For the Rights of the Child (WCPRC) Programme, on Saturday urged the youth take advantage of the government's youth programmes to acquire employable skills to enable them to eliminate poverty.

Launching this year's International Youth Day on the theme: "Tackling Poverty Together" at Takoradi, she said the youth would succeed in the fight against poverty through the acquisition of employable and marketable skills.

The Youth Action Movement (YAM), a youth wing of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), organised the celebration. Miss Ansah-Eshon, who also the Chairperson of the Coalition on the Rights of the Child, said the youth should assist to eliminate poverty by 2015 as set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). She said to achieve these goals the youth should aim at academic excellence, good income and good citizenship.

They should also protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and ensure clean and healthy environment, Miss Ansah-Eshon added.

Papa Assan, Western Regional Youth Coordinator, said the people should embrace the National Youth Employment Programme because youth employment was an important strategy for development. He noted that the integration of young people into productive employment in the next five years was a big challenge, saying, interventions in areas of education, health and employment for the youth could break the poverty cycle and without such interventions, poverty would deepen.

Papa Assan said neglect and under-funding of programmes enabling young people to avoid unwanted pregnancies, unsafe childbirth and sexually transmitted infections (STI) were undermining development and spreading HIV/AIDS.