The Volta River Authority (VRA) has extended its Employee Volunteer Programme to the Sogakofe Senior High School in the South Tongu District of the Volta Region.

The two-day programme initiative saw student participants enlightened about career opportunities, and courses and programmes they should study to pursue their preferred profession.

This was laced with an information and communication technology boot camp and STEM education which exposed the participants to the significance of acquiring ICT skills as the world evolves into the fourth industrial revolution.

The second day saw VRA staff, who have a diverse range of human resources, teaching specific subjects in the classrooms to help students better understand the subjects by adding a practical aspect.

The Sogakofe Senior High School is the 24th public second-cycle school to benefit from the VRA’s corporate social responsibility programme which has made an impact in helping past beneficiaries achieve their career goals.

The Principal Information and Publicity Officer of VRA, John Choba, said the programme seeks to inspire and guide the career choices of the beneficiaries, the team carefully selects some careers and educates the beneficiaries on what to look out for when they decide to pursue a particular career.

He explained that the programme was also designed to help beneficiaries identify their strength and weaknesses which is important in selecting professions.

“You also need to know yourself. I believe that in the field of journalism, journalists are energetic people because they keep on moving, chasing the President, chasing news stories and so on. If you are not energetic, you will collapse along the line. If you are not a nursing person, you may not be able to take care of somebody in the hospital”, he said.

He said that VRA leveraged its diverse human resource staff to “reinforce learning so that they [students] take whatever their teachers are reaching them seriously.”

“After inspiring these students, we expect that they will pursue their careers diligently so that they will become various professionals in the future for the benefit of Mother Ghana, as the earlier beneficiaries did."

“Some of them are teachers, some of them are engineers. Some of them have even gone further to pursue further education and are abroad, still steady. Others have gone into teaching abroad and are now lecturing, and so on”, said Mr Choba.

The Assistant Headmistress of Administration of Sogakofe Senior High School, Alice Tanyedzi, lauded the initiative by VRA, hoping it would help the students to carefully select a profession based on their knowledge and strengths.

She, however, appealed for an ICT lab for the school to help in the teaching and learning of the discipline.

A beneficiary, Jennifer Kotoku, said after participating in the program she is now well-informed on what career path to choose.

“It [Employee Volunteer Programme] will help me very well, yes. In terms of choosing my career, yes, and it will make me decide boldly on the kind of career I want to pursue. It will help me develop, and it won't get to a point that I'll be messed up with a kind of career that I will choose”, he said.