The Regional Advisory Information and Network Systems (RAINS), Tamale based NGO dedicated to offering care and support to needy persons and communities, has offered vocational training to 40 female porters (kayayee) who were operating in the Tamale Metropolis to acquire skills.
The beneficiaries received training in dressmaking, financial literacy, business plans development, productive health education and personal hygiene.
Comic Relief and Hope for Children, UK-based NGOs, jointly funded the training that is also meant to help prevent girls from drifting from the
villages to urban centres.
Ms Sayibu Wedadu, Programme Coordinator of RAINS who spoke at their graduation ceremony, said RAINS would continue to support needy persons and their communities to improve their living standards.
She said RAINS, since its inception in 1996, had helped in addressing problems of poverty, education, health and sanitation in its operational areas.
Ms Wedadu said the training of the 40 was part of its programme to help end the rural urban migration especially those from the north by giving them self-employable skills.
The beneficiaries were also given sewing machines and accessories, training certificates and some money in a form of micro-credit to facilitate
the setting up of their own shops and businesses.
Hajia Hazara Telly, a Board Member of RAINS, called on the District Assemblies and other stakeholders to help address the problem of rural
urban drift.
She appealed to other funding agencies to support RAINS to train more people, which could help address poverty in the north and announced that
more than 50,000 needy girls in the Northern Region are earmarked to be trained in the next two years.