Newmont Ghana, in partnership with GIZ Ghana and PYXERA Global, established the Women Economic Resilience Programme (WERP) to ameliorate the situation of local community women based organisations (WOBs) in the clothes making business whose work and revenue had been negatively impacted by the economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The WERP is, in all, supporting 80 WOBs, within Newmont Ghana’s host communities to recover and sustain their livelihoods as well as help revamp their economic activities.
Under the WERP, we are setting up three sewing centres in our Ahafo North, Ahafo South and. Akyem host communities. The Centres has identified and will train dressmakers (WOBs) in the communities in the art of quality sewing and finishing.
They will also be given business and financial management skills. The WOBs will also receive training in quality assurance, basic industrial sewing machine operation and maintenance, health & safety, materials sourcing, sewing best practices, product handling, packaging and branding, fair trade compliance and marketing strategy.
The Ahafo North WERP Centre, which is operational and supported by GIZ Ghana , has been equipped with industrial sewing and knitting machines and is training 30 women based businesses, from our Adrobaa, Susuanso, Terchire, Afirisipakrom and Yamfo communities, in the clothes making business.
A Centre Manager has also been recruited to manage the Centre under the supervision of Pyxera Global.
Adiki Ayitiivie, Vice President, Sustainability & External Relations of Newmont Ghana said” recently paid a visit to the Centre and was amazed by women’s sewing dexterity and the skills they had acquired in the period of time they have been trained.”
The testimony of one of the participants, Paulina Afriyie who is from our Techire host community says it all.
“ … My shop is adjacent a school and because I could not sew school uniforms, I have had to sadly watch students and parents take their sewing elsewhere. Since WERP trained us on school uniforms especially for the boys, my shop has been booming with new customers. I am also grateful that the training we did on Fire and Safety helped me a few weeks ago when one of my apprentices chocked on food. The knowledge I have learnt helped me save her life.“
