Ernestina Naadu Mills fights unemployment
First Lady in a tete-a-tete with the Senegalese Ambassador to the US, Fatou Danielle Diagne
She said youth unemployment was deepening the levels of poverty, particularly in developing countries, and called for effective measures that would provide jobs for young people worldwide.
The First Lady made the call at the ongoing Youth Infusion Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), currently underway in Annapolis Maryland, USA.
Mrs. Mills called on countries to empower their youth so they could positively impact on the socio-economic and sustainable development of their nations.
She stated that developing countries could learn from the skills development programmes introduced in the last three years in Ghana by President Mills’ administration, which provided skills training for unemployed youth.
This initiative, she added, went a long way to create more opportunities for the youth, who hitherto had no hopes of being gainfully employed.
Some of them, she said, included the Local Enterprise and Skills Development Programme (LESDEP), the National Youth Authority, distribution of free laptops, Youth in Agriculture Programme, Youth in Road Maintenance, among others.
The conference was aimed at bringing together First Ladies and young leaders from different cultures and civilizations to dialogue based upon respect for commonly shared values.
UNESCO believes it is through such dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development, encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO’s missions and activities.
Naadu Mills also stressed the need for development partners to ensure that governments delivered quality education to its people as a means of reducing unemployment, especially among the youth.
She said, “It is important for every government to focus more on the quality of its human resource since this is a world that has become competitive and everywhere people are competing for space and it is only the strongest who survive”.
Source Daily Guide Ghana
Category: News
