By Tlotliso Kenneth Thamae
The National director of SOS Children’s village Lesotho Mr. Molopo Mokorosi has officially inaugurated Youth Empowerment program at Youth Centre in Quthing district on the 20th of February 2020.
In these inaugurations, there was District Administrator representative, Ministry of Education representative Mr. Lereko Motebang, Department of Forestry Mrs. ‘Mabatho Nthejane and Acer representative Glenn Du Toit.
Mr. Molopo Mokorosi National Director of SOS Children’s village Lesotho.
Mr. Mokorosi stated that the Youth Empowerment program is preordained to offer non-formal education to youths from the age of 14 to 24 who dropped out of school in more than 12months. “The aim of this program is destined to meet Basotho youth who don’t have enough funds to pursue formal education. The program consists of four facilities which is; Information (ICT), Food Art, Sawing and Agriculture. The training will last for 6 months for the first group and other groups will follow until we complete in the period of two years. The ICT training which is done by Computer Business Solutions (CBS) will issue the International Computer driving License and other facilities will also accolade internationally recognized certificates.
This will pave the way for youth as they will be internationally recognized. It will be easy for them to find jobs abroad as they have qualifications. On the other side; agriculture is the back of the economy of the country, therefore let us motivate our youth to engage fully in agriculture. However, we still expect everyone to return back to the formal education whenever the opportunity befalls.” Mokorosi stated.
Acer representative Glenn Du Toit speaking on behalf of his company which donated 26 Acer Desktops for this project stated that youth who are given the opportunity to come and learn must take it as a fortune as there are other people out there who are alacritous for the same opportunity.
“It’s one thing to give computers, but computers only give you access and education is something completely different, you can’t be educated by computer but computer can assist you to be educated. We have to make the effort; the world that we live in is very unfair. It treats people differently, that’s a reality. Sometimes we want to pretend like it’s not a reality and everyone is equal but the world is unfair and we as individuals no matter where we are, we always has somebody who has got more opportunity but we must also never forget that there are lot of people below who don’t have opportunities that we have and our responsibility as individuals, as people and as human being is to look after people who don’t have opportunity and lift them up and give them opportunity.” Du Toit remarked.
As appreciation of leaning opportunity offered by SOS Children’s village Lesotho, one of the enrolled students passed the word of ovation to SOS and the partnering donors. “I would like to thank SOS Lesotho and all donors for giving us such a huge opportunity to learn free of charge. Indeed we are so thankful. We would also like to make a pledged that we will take good care of all the resources and we them wisely so that our fellow brothers will have opportunity to come and learn like us.”