Gender Responsive Skills Project for 59 districts

Daily Graphicc (Pg 11) Tues., June 29/10

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
A four-year pilot project, dubbed the Gender Responsive Skills and Community Development Project (GRSCDP), is to be implemented in 59 selected districts across the country at a cost of $14.63million to include gender concerns into the assemblies' policies.
Under the project, all budget planning officers and other selected district assembly staff including some stakeholders in the various regions have undergone a day's seminar to enhance their knowledge about the project.
The four-year pilot project which is supported by the Ghana Government and the African Development Bank (AfDB) will benefit about 3.5 million women. The project will also sponsor 500 needy boys and girls to go through vocational training within the selected districts.
The regional distribution of the selected districts are Eastern; seven, Ashanti; six, Brong Ahafo; seven, Volta; six, Upper East; five, Upper West; four, Northern; four, Western; six, Central; six and Greater Accra; eight.
It also recognises the importance of women empowerment and equitable participation in development as vital to reducing poverty in the country.
Speaking at the last of a series of regional seminars at Koforidua in the Eastern Region, the Project Manager, Mr Forster Kwame Boateng said some of the benefits that the participating districts would enjoy include the rehabilitation of 25 community vocational institutes which would train the youth on employable skills.
He said as part of the project, the National Vocational and Training Institute (NVTI) would be supported to redesign its curriculum in order to be more responsive and also focus on competence based training to boost middle level manpower for the development needs of the people.
Also he said 512 teachers within the NVTI sector who had been identified would be trained on the new curriculum to enable them support the programme which would also link potential employers to training, as a way of managing the labour market.
According to him, the project through the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC), which was the implementor of the project, was working at ensuring that teachers under vocational training were employed by the government.
He said the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDA's) would also benefit from capacity building in order to make them more gender sensitive in their development programmes.
Mr Foster said when completed, the project would help bring socio-economic independent to women and their children in the participating districts and the country as a whole adding that the project would also ensure equitable socio-economic development in the country.
During an open forum, participants lauded the project and rather mentioned that the issue of gender was critical to the development of the country since women were the most vulnerable in the country.
The participants called for more support for women so that they could engage themselves in more employable skills to improve on their socio-economic needs in future.
Others also called for an increase in the number of scholarships for needy boys and girls in the various communities.