Govt commits GH¢4.5 million to Head of State Awards Scheme

The government is committed to supporting the Head of State Awards Scheme with GH4.5 million to enhance its operations towards the goal of reaching out to 500,000 young people by the year 2024.

The Head of State Awards is a youth awards programme founded in 1956 with the aim of recognising young adults for completing a series of self-improvement exercises.

The President, Nana Addo Dankwa AKufo-Addo announced this at the 2019 Gold Award Presentation of the Head of State Awards Scheme held at the Jubilee House in Accra, after constituting a Board of Trustees to offer leadership and guidance to the management of the scheme.

At the ceremony, 100 young men and women who had in the past 18 months dedicated themselves to the training programmes of the scheme and had worked to achieve certain goals were honoured.

Participants of the training programme were trained to develop positive attitudes and values and acquired useful knowledge and skills required for their personal development.

President Akufo-Addo congratulated the award winners and commended the management and private donors of the programme for their contribution to the development of the country’s future leaders.

He said the scheme had for the past 52 years, contributed to equipping many young Ghanaians with the skills and experiences aimed at preparing them to be disciplined and responsible citizens.

According to President Akufo-Addo, the theme for this year’s ceremony, “Enhancing youth employability through non-formal education” was apt, since Africa’s working population had been projected to be a quarter of the world’s population by the year 2035.

“Providing young education with education skills training will constitute a powerful tool for economic development in Africa,” he said adding however, that “not all learning can occur in the classrooms”.

The President stressed the need to create opportunities for education to be delivered informally, indicating that informal education played a key role in enhancing the confidence, competencies, skills and opportunities for young people.

“The awards scheme provides such life changing experiences for all young people and develops their leadership potentials. It equips, empowers, connects, and transforms the lives of our youth and helps integrate employability skills into core academic contents and vocational training in a more professional way,” he said.

President Akufo-Addo expressed the government’s commitments to resource the scheme and commended the management for opening offices in Ho, Tamale and Takoradi, in addition to the secretariat in Accra.

He pledged to give the Accra office a facelift, adding, “We are working to allocate a new office space for the secretariat”.

President Akufo-Addo also announced plans by the government to rebrand the name of the scheme to “President’s Award Ghana”.