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VIRINA, a Japanese fashion design company, in collaboration with the Japanese Organisation for International Family Planning (JOICFP), through apprenticeship, has trained six young girls in fashion design at Akateng in the Upper Manya Krobo District of the Eastern Region.

While VIRINA was the main sponsor of the programme for the past two years, JOICFP, based in Ghana, facilitated and coordinated the programme on the theme: ‘’Learn a skill, be economically empowered.

At the graduation ceremony at Akateng, the six apprentices who were trained for two years demonstrated their skills in fashion design to the admiration of both their parents, the sponsors and the general public.

The Chief Executive Officer of VIRINA, Ai Aoki, who spoke to the gathering via Zoom, was happy that their investments in the skills training had become meaningful to the young girls who had undergone the training for two years.

‘’I am very happy that you, the six young girls who had been supported by VIRINA, took instruction and advice from your mistresses, and you are graduating today.

Go and practice what you have learned so that other young girls also can benefit from you by way of training others also’’, Ms Aoki advised. 

Apprenticeship training  

Giving the background of the skills training project, the Country Director of JOICFP, Emmanuel Obeng, said his organisation, which had been in the Upper Manya Krobo District since 2022, had come to realise that parental care was very low and as a result, teenage pregnancy was very high, stressing ‘’parents even give their young teenage girls for marriage’’.

He explained that as part of JOICFP’s mission to help address these social vices, particularly unwanted teenage pregnancy and maternal deaths in the Akateng community, among others, his organisation had initiated the apprenticeship skills training to economically empower the young girls and not to be a burden to their immediate families and the larger society.

The leader of the trainers, Agnes Tettey, advised the young girls at Akateng to take a cue from those who had undergone the skills training.

One of the graduates, Sarah Ayittah, who spoke to the Daily Graphic on behalf of her other colleagues, lauded VIRINA and JOICFP for the skills training and pledged that they, the six graduates, would not disappoint the sponsors and would be shining examples to other young girls at Akateng.