The need to get together as a union to engage in Ghanaian cultural promotion and socialization as well as mobilize financial support to help development in Akuapem has led to the formation of an Okuapeman Union of New Jersey.
An inaugural dance and cultural display was held at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, New Jersey, recently.
The occasion was also a solidarity night as all the Ghanaian ethnic groups in Newark made representation to the newest in the many Ghanaian ethnic associations in the United States.
The Embassy of Ghana in Washington, DC was represented by its Minister Counselor-Head of Public Affairs, Mr. Ivor Agyeman-Duah who praised the executive members of the new union and wished them peace.
He said many of the unions and associations started with good intensions but some lapsed into litigation and disintegration and expressed the hope that since the Akuapems are perhaps the most peaceful people in Ghana, peace would reign so that they would concentrate on their objectives.
Mr. Agyeman-Duah also advised the union not only to define culture in the narrow sense of drumming and dancing but also combine it with the knowledge of science and technology available in the world today.
All countries have cultures he said, but a combination of ‘a peoples cultural achievement fused with modern technology and a sense of patriotism is what makes the economic development in East-Asia for example a model worth examining.’
