Sinapi Aba organised skills training for persons with disability
Many people with disabilities are often ignored in society and regarded as people not capable of learning any useful skills that will help them earn income for themselves and able to contribute their quota to the development of the society at large. This bad attitude from the mass usually undermines their self-confidence and as a result, they resort to the street as beggars. It must be emphasized that, developing persons with disabilities through variety of life-enhancing skills is essential in every society as it ensures all-inclusive and holistic socio-economic development in Ghana enabling them improve their self-economic capabilities, self-esteem and confidence in demonstrating their worthiness as part of society.
Sinapi Aba Trust, as part of its women empowerment program has initiated a series of trainings in partnership with Opportunity International UK, to train persons with disability at a zero fee so they can learn useful skills to help them earn a living and contribute to the society in a more productive way. It is anticipated that participants of this program will utilize their newly skills to become self-reliant.
Sinapi Aba under this empowerment program trained a hundred and ten (110) persons between the ages of 16 to 61 suffering from disabilities such as intellectual and sensory impairment, mild to severe physical disabilities and challenges amongst others. The skill training took place in Tamale and Wa Municipalities and was facilitated by resource persons, Madam Luccila Dayour and Salifu Jamila who are expects in training people with special needs.
The participants were trained on the processing of products such as liquid soup, shower gel, detergents, a bleach substance, air freshener, body lotion and many others. The facilitator adopted a well-structured practical approach which helped the trainees to understand and embrace these new skills. “This training is to help persons with disability redeem their self-esteem, respect, confidence and also integrate them successfully with their peers in their society so they can live normal life as much as possible”, she said.
Mr. Isaac Okyere Darko, the Project Manager, was highly impressed with the enthusiasm of the participant actively following the demonstration of facilitator commenting that, “persons with disability should not let their disability be an obstacle to their success in life. They can succeed with the knowledge acquired at the workshop”. He again said “Sinapi Aba is committed to supporting them with other skilled training programs and financial literacy education”. The Participants were highly motivated to save some of their money from their daily sales and re-invest their profit to grow their businesses.
To encourage, motivate and also ensure that participants put the skills they have acquired into practice, Sinapi Aba will reimburse participants some cash grant to cover a part of their cost of their first production. The first production was to be done in groups so as to initiate peer to peer learnings and also urge them to network amongst themselves for knowledge and experience sharing.
Remarks from the participant after the training;
‘‘I’m happy to be part of the training. I have learnt so many things. I say God bless you Sinapi Aba for thinking about us and given us this life transformation opportunity”
[Dunyagri Suraj, age; 38]
‘‘First and foremost, I want to thank God and to also thank Sinapi Aba for organizing one of a kind program for us, persons with disability. I now know Sinapi Aba is a bank that has the interest of the society at heart. I’m happy and empowered to start a business with what I have learnt from the training.”
[Saani Salima, age; 28]
‘‘I’m really happy for this life transforming training, I’m hopeful this training will help us redeem our reputation as we’ve been seen as street beggars. God bless Sinapi Aba for impacting our life with these hand on skills training which we could not have afforded to learn by our own. We hope to see more of such skills training especially on many more different products on the market.”
[Adam Ishmeal, age; 38]
