Mr Mark Woyongo, Upper East Regional Minister, on Wednesday commended managements of Youth Harvest Foundation (YHF) and Junior Achievement (JA) both NGO’s for collaborating to train the youth in the Region entrepreneurial skills to become self-reliant. He made the commendation in a speech read on his behalf by Mr Abdulai Hakeem, Deputy Upper East Regional Coordinating Director at the launching of entrepreneurial skills training programme in Bolgatanga. Mr Woyongo said acquisition of entrepreneurial skills was a major tool for job creation and urged the youth to take advantage of the opportunity. The two NGO’s signed a memorandum of understanding on "Junior Achievement Company and National Programme" targeting two different age groups of the youth. The "JA Company Programme" would target students in Senior High Schools and "National Programme" for students at the Junior High Schools. The programme was jointly sponsored by managements of Barclays Bank, Newmont, Coca-Cola Company, Goldfield Ghana, ECOBANK Ghana and DHL. He urged the beneficiaries to take the training serious to empower them in their livelihood and appealed to them to eschew drunkenness, drug abuse and stealing. Mr Jefferson Worlanyo Agbai, Executive Director of JA Ghana, said the training was to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in the global economy through entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness. He said JA was founded in 1919 by Theodore Vail, President of American Telephone and Telegraph and other partners, and for nearly 90 years had helped train many young people in its area of operations performing well. Mr Agbai noted that since the programme was introduced in Ghana in 2007, it had trained about 3,000 students with entrepreneurial skills and easy acquisition of jobs. Mr John Kingsley Krugu, Director of YHF said self-reliance was ideal to reduce poverty and appealed to Government to provide the necessary environment for people especially the youth to acquire entrepreneurship skills and create enabling environment for the smooth operation of enterprises in the Region. Mr Daud James Abang-Gos, Upper East Regional Coordinator of National Youth Council, said Government alone could not provide jobs for the youth, and appealed to them to learn entrepreneurial skills and good business practices to be gainfully employed and employ others. Source: GNA