The Youth Opportunity and Transformation in Africa (YOTA), an NGO at the forefront of youth development in Africa, has engaged some youth in the Wa Municipality of the Upper West Region to build their capacity to seek redress for the debilitating effects of COVID-19 on education at the aftermath of the pandemic.
The four-day workshop is to consolidate the efforts of the government towards mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all aspects of the national economy especially education.
The training which started on Monday, July 4 is expected to end on Thursday, July 7, 2022.
Mr Freeman Benjamin Mensah, a facilitator of the workshop told the Info Radio in an interview that the project, dubbed Youth on Board (YoB) project, is to amplify youth voices to advocate lessening the effects of the pandemic on the country.
“When COVID-19 struck, it affected our education systems and governments of nations responded to it, similarly Ghana has a response,” Mr Freeman stated, saying that the focus of the YoB project is to engender youth voices in Ghana’s education response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He cited some of the issues that were created by the COVID-19 as teenage pregnancy and its associated negativities including school dropout; loss of instructional hours, disruption of academic calendars, among others.
Thus, he said young people who are mostly at the centre of the ravages of the pandemic need a ‘louder’ voice to press home equitable access to the recovery interventions.
He said the participants, who are drawn from diverse youth groups and networks, are being trained to also bring onboard other young people for the advocacy because the youth suffered the most in terms of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The youth groups, after the capacity training, are expected to form a YoB coalition with an actionable strategy to address some issues they would identify as pressing.
The participants at the training said it is impactful and will help them advocate effectively against the impacts induced, and exacerbated, by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Throughout this program, we have been empowered with skills that could lead us to advocate changes in problems that have occurred since COVID-19 happened.
“And some of these problems are serious and they affect the educational system, so over here, the skills we are empowered with would help us to advocate in the right way with facts,” Rahinatu Haruna, a participant, said.
Some of the participants also intimated that the training has exposed them to some of the issues that they did not imagine were triggered by the pandemic.
“I knew it [COVID-19] had impacted the world but then I came here and I hear people also tell me what the impacts were, I never actually thought were some impacts,” said Dorcas Duut.
Sabastian Angumah Mbabugri, another participant, sharing his experience from the ongoing training, said it was an opportunity for young people to come together to speak for the vulnerable and marginalized in the society in terms of access to government initiatives.
He said there was therefore the need for the youth to add their voices in advocating access to the central and local government policies aimed at mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the education sector.
The four-day training workshop will be crested with a youth forum where additional youth groups will be invited to support the YoB project Action Plan in the municipality.