The Executive Director of Norsaac, Alhaji Mohamed Awal Alhassan, has encouraged young change makers to dream big by ensuring that their visions impact their societies in more positive ways.
Alhaji Awal Alhassan, who doubles as the Country Management Team, chair of Power to Youth, a youth led advocacy, said this at a grants awards event to some distinguished youth-led community initiatives, found in 40 communities in 10 districts in the Northern, Upper East, Savanna and North East regions.
The grantees, formed the second cohort of the Youth Initiative Small Grant (YISG), which is a component of a five-year – Power to Youth programme, being implemented by Norsaac, together with Songtagba and GH Alliance.
The YISG, offers small grant to youth-led community groups to undertake advocacy activities around three key areas; Harmful Practices, Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) and Unintended Pregnancies. Primarily women, girls and the persons with disability are the key targets for reach outs.
Alhaji Awal said investing in youth would save the nation’s future, hence through empowerment and mentorship such as YISG, young people are being inspired to turn their innovative ideas into tangible realities that would bring positive changes to their communities.
“You should think about impacting the society, firstly by taking advantage of your passion and commitment,” the CMT Chair stated.
Alhaji Awal urged the YISG grantees to be open to embracing newer challenges and share their experiences with the various stakeholders.
The ED of Norsaac challenged the grantees to judiciously use the funds given them by establishing systems to ensure accountability alongside strengthening their own institutional capacities.
‘Let us foster a culture of innovation by taking advantage of technology to tell our stories,” he added.
Based on the successes recorded during the first call, the number of grantee have been increased from 10 to 15, while five other youth groups have been earmarked to receive capacity building.
Beneficiaries of the grants; which ranged from 15,000 to 30,000 Ghana cedis include Martha Inspired, Activista Ghana, and Rural Connect. The grants are expected to be used for community activities between now and November 2023.
During an earlier orientation that preceded the grants, the recipients were exposed to Grants and request processes, Branding and Communications as well as synergy building.
The National Co-ordinator of the Power to Youth, Mathilda Ayamga, said the youth driven advocacy is a global program running across seven countries namely – Kenya, Senegal, Indonesia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi and Ghana, and principled on youth leadership, youth participation, engagement and partnership.
“The five year project which is in its midway of implementation is helping to build urgencies of youth so that they can be motivated to speak for themselves and also for societal actors to be responsive or appreciate the cause of youth,” she added.
Ms. Ayamga said equally, state actors too are expected to improve on policy initiation processes and implementation on the issues that affect youth.
For his part, Ernest Obeng, a projects officer at the National Youth Authority (NYA) challenged the beneficiary groups to be arrest with the national youth policy and the Act that operationalize the authority.
He explained this will enable them work with the policy in line with their priority areas of work. Mr. Obeng encouraged youth-led groups to formalize their activities by registering with the NYA for benefits which includes receiving technical support when undertaking an activity.
Story By: Nelson Adanuti Nyadror |www.diamondfmonline.com |Ghana.
