Through your support, OIC and our trusted Ghanaian partner Sinapi Aba Savings and Loans (SASL), will launch a Youth Apprenticeship Program (YAP) Cohort of 250 high-risk, vulnerable youth (lovingly referred to as Yappies), mostly young women, who will embark on a 36-month journey to set their lives on an entirely new course. YAP addresses the barriers of poverty, hopelessness, and joblessness, paving a clear path for their transition into confident, economically and socially productive, self-supporting young adults.

Youth at risk are provided with skills training, tools of their chosen trade, an apprenticeship position with a qualified Trade Master, health care, spiritual and emotional support, financial and social skills training, all culminating in the official certification from the Ghana National Institute for Vocational Training (NIVT). Through this holistic and supportive program, these young people escape the common outcomes associated with underemployment and poverty such as crime, drugs, prostitution, gangs, abuse, early pregnancy and chronic depression.

Generous funding will enable OIC and SASL to launch a new YAP Cohort in Accra, reaching 3,450 people by empowering 250 Yappies and their 1,025 family members, 125 Trade Masters (TMs) who benefit from capacity-building skills training, and about 2,050 community members through increased incomes, skill sharing and job creation. Funding will be designated toward expenses in Years One and Two.