Kumasi (Ashanti), 2 March '99 -

About 3,000 out-of-school youth have been targeted in the Kumasi Metropolitan Area to benefit from various skill and rehabilitation training programmes under an Adolescent Reproductive Health (ARH) project. About 150 youth identified as pregnant and parenting teenagers, who are school drop-outs, will also be rehabilitated under the project. Mr Nelson Agyemang, Executive Director of Youth Development Foundation (YDF), announced this at the opening of a five-day training workshop on ARH issues in Kumasi yesterday. The workshop is being organised and sponsored by the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) based in Seattle, USA, for the YDF and Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), who are the implementers of the ARH project. The workshop is designed to sharpen the skills of the implementers and collaborators in adolescent reproductive health issues and provide them training, which will in turn enable them to transfer such knowledge and skills to their peers. Mr Agyemang said 250 of the out-of-school youth have been earmarked to attend literacy classes and receive life skills training and other services. The rest of them will be educated on how to avoid the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS and HIV as well as make them more responsive adults. Dr Asha Mohamud, Senior Programmes Officer of PATH, said to start with, the project has embarked on a base-line survey, which is aimed at collecting data on out-of-school youth and identifying their skills, needs and services. He was optimistic that after the two-and-half years duration of the project, the PPAG and YDF will be in a better position to provide the requisite services and assistance to the out-of-school youth and help reduce the ignorance and the irresponsibility of such unfortunate youth in the system. Dr Agartha Bonney, the Kumasi Metropolitan Director of Health, called on the 32 participants at the workshop not to concentrate on educating others only but should also apply what they have acquired on themselves in whatever situation and environment they live.