'HAY Movement' celebrates International Youth Day

The Harvest Youth Movement (HAY), a youth ambassador group under Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG) in Bolgatanga, has marked International Youth Day with a seminar to sensitize young people on their responsibilities and advocate employment opportunities.

The Day was on the theme, ‘Youth Engagement for Global Action’ and engaged many young people from the region.

The YHFG is a youth focused Non-Governmental Organisation, which seeks to support and promote skills development in young people, with a focus on entrepreneurship and employable and social skills development, to address unemployment among the youth.

Madam Priscilla Nyaaba, the Executive Director of YHFG, Bolgatanga, said the essence of the commemoration was to highlight issues that affected young people and also build their capacities to become more actively involved in making positive contributions to the society.

"We believe that as young people, we have to empower them to reach their full potentials in their personal lives and career development, to become active advocates for the rights of other young people," she said.

Madam Nyaaba said although the youth constituted the great majority globally, they were often not engaged in decisions that concerned them.

"Young people are their own development agents and so engaging them offers community leaders the expertise and partnership of young people to understand what it is to grow up in a rapidly changing world," she added.

She said her organisation had rolled out certain projects in some communities in the Upper East Region hence the formation of the 'HAY Movement' ambassador group to aid in the campaign against issues that affects the youth.

The Executive Director appealed to politicians to desist from using naive youth to orchestrate political violence as the country prepared towards the December 7, 2020 polls.

Ms Mercy Asoona, a member of the ‘HAY Movement', appealed to policy makers to institute policies that would ensure massive employment of the youth in various sectors of the economy.

That, she said would curb the rate of social vices in communities and also allow young ones to bring their inputs that would contribute to national development.

Ms Asoona urged the youth to guard themselves against bad influences and involve in volunteer labour, especially in community services.