World Vision Ghana collaborates with Microsoft over unemployment
The World Vision Ghana, has partnered Microsoft to salvage the huge unemployment of the youth in Ghana through the implementation of the YouthSpark project.
Speaking at an event Sagane Thiaus, the Operations Director at the World Vision Ghana said the partnership was significant.
Mr Thiaus said: “This project is in line with one of our major strategic objectives, which seeks to improve household food security and resilience of all children especially the most vulnerable and their families.”
“In all, 2300 youth have so far been reached through campus outreach activities, boot camp events, community engagements, live radio discussions, social media engagement within one year of operation,” he said.
Mr Derek Appiah, the Microsoft Country Director said in interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the partnership was to create employability skills so that the youth of today could have the skills for the jobs of tomorrow in the age of technology advancement.
“Microsoft is doing this project in 13 African countries in Africa and this is the Ghana version, which is tailored to the Ghanaian market.”
Mr Appiah said, the YouthSpark was a project, which Microsoft was committed to continuing to provide the content on the online piece saying.
“we will continue in terms of this initiative because employability is something that Ghanaians need,” he said.
He said the current stage of the project required that other partners who were interested to come on board to fund the initiative, which had helped some youth in the country over the year to gain employable skills.
Mr Raymond Owusu, the Grant Manager of World Vision Ghana said the YouthSpark was “a one-stop shop offering full ecosystem of services for entrepreneurship and employability”.
According Mr Owusu, the project comprised six components: career planning causes, career counselling, mentorship, job matching, entrepreneurship resources and networking, which had a target as youth from 16-30 years.
He said the project, which was launched March last year, had reached 2300 youth through radio discussion and having 2657 youth accessing the project through the portal [http//:tizaa.work].
More than 1107 youth are taking courses and 1150 have been taken through physical learning and training of which 51 of them have gained direct employment opportunity.
Mr Christian Evadzi, the YouthSpark Project Coordinator under the World Vision said in an interview with the GNA that the youth in the urban centres were not using the internet profitably to build up.
He therefore called on the youth who are able to access the internet to make the most of it, to take courses and find jobs, which would increase their chances in life.
Source: GNA