YILO NFED REWARDS FACILITATORS (PAGE 39)

SEVENTY facilitators of the Non-Formal Education Division (NFED) who voluntarily spent 21 months to teach illiterate adults in the Yilo Krobo District how to read and write have been rewarded.
The facilitators, who formed the 11th batch of the facilitators, engaged by the NFED, also taught the adult learners various vocational skills to help them generate income for themselves and their dependants.
They were each presented with a packet of roofing sheets.
Presenting the items to them at Somanya at the weekend, the Yilo Krobo District Director of the NFED, Mr Nicholas Addai, said the facilitators, together with 95 others who were engaged last year, were able to “transform 2,279 adult illiterates in the district into semi-literates who can read, write and understand government policies.”
He said apart from that, the adult learners were also taken through some income generating ventures, such as poultry, grass cutter and snail rearing.
Mr Addai thanked the facilitators for their services and appealed to them to continue to offer such services anytime they were needed to do so.
Mr Addai also expressed his profound gratitude to the Yilo Krobo District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Joseph Adu Tawiah for his support of the programme.
Mr Adu Tawiah for his part, urged the facilitators to properly educate the adult learners on government policies so that they would not be misled by anyone.
“There is the need for you to let our unfortunate brothers and sisters, who through no fault of theirs could not benefit from formal education, to know of government policies and general economic trends so that they would not out of ignorance, blame the government for the economic hardships, which is not peculiar to Ghana.
“Now the prices of petroleum products are high as well as food items all over the world, which the learners must know so that they do not blame the government for the soaring prices and this I hope will be done,” Mr Adu Tawiah stressed.
The DCE, who was satisfied with the general conduct of the facilitators, however, appealed to those with shortcomings to live up to expectation.
He gave the assurance that the assembly would continue to support the NFED in the education of the people in the area since such an initiative would help to reduce poverty and ignorance in the district.
The Asafoatse of Plao, a suburb of Somanya, Nene Teye Kwao, who chaired the function, gave the assurance that chiefs in the area would continue to support any initiative that would broaden the horizon of the uneducated in the area.