The Sagnarigu Youth Parliament and the Northern Regional Youth Network, Northern Region-based youth groups, have undertaken a clean-up exercise at the Shekhinah Clinic, in the Gurugu community in the Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern region.

The exercise is to ensure users of the facility lived and worked in a clean environment.

It was also to promote good health and wellbeing among staff, patients and clients of the Clinic and was supported by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), through its Sahel Peace Initiative (SPI).

The SPI is aimed at empowering the youth to take-up initiatives that would promote social cohesion and peacebuilding in their communities.

Madam Anuru-yeng D. Akanlugwai, SPI Project Officer at the CRS, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said the exercise was to keep the facility clean and safe, and to promote peaceful coexistence.

She said, “we decided to support the two youth groups to conduct this exercise to reduce the sanitation problem in the Clinic and the Municipality as a whole, and also serve as avenue for the people to socialise and relate well with each other”.

Reverend Father Gerald Zienna, Diocesan Youth Chaplain of the Catholic Archdiocese of Tamale, urged management and health workers of the Clinic to be mindful of the state of sanitation in the facility, and ensure they worked assiduously to maintain good hygienic environment while encouraging peace and unity among residents in their communities.

Mr Issahaku Abdul-Latif, the Speaker of the Sagnarigu Youth Parliament, said ensuring peace in the country demanded the youth to get involved in activities that would bring tolerance and unity among members of the country, hence, the idea behind the clean-up exercise.

Mr Inusah Mohammed, Northern Regional Youth Network Convener, expressed gratitude to the CRS for supporting the exercise and added that, as a youth group, they would contribute their quota to ensure peace and stability in the region.

The CRS as part of the exercise, donated bags of maize, rice, gallons of cooking oil and some quantities of tomato paste to the Shekhinah Clinic.