WAD doing its part!

“The Women’s Action for Development (WAD) is not responsible for providing employment or to establish business entities for its trainees,” responded Salatiel Shinedima, Executive Director of WAD to, Honourable Lucia Basson, //Karas Regional Governor who recently singled out the (WAD) as one of the institutions that train people without having any programme in place that will benefit trainees afterwards. “I want them to be trained for something, not just train them and leave them in the air,” she said. r Salatiel Shinedima, Executive Director of Women’s Action For Development (WAD), emphasised that WAD is equally concerned about the high unemployment rate in the country and that is why they, at WAD have taken it upon themself to equip the unemployed with vocational skills. “However it should be noted that WAD is a non-profit organisation that depends on donor funding and therefore we are not in the financial position to provide employment or to establish business entities for our trainees,” he said.
He emphasised that WAD encourages the regional and local leadership to assume the responsibility of creating opportunities for their trainees, and that employment creation and poverty eradication is a collective responsibility of all development stakeholders. “We are playing our part by providing training to the unemployed and we anticipate other stakeholders to take over from there,” he said.
Mr Shinedima commented on the statement by the Honourable, implying that WAD’s training and that of other training institutions are of no use, if trainees do not get employed. “We view this remark in a serious note because it has the potential of discouraging donors from supporting NGOs and other institutions that are involved in skills training programs,” he responded.
He did acknowledged that some of their trainees are sitting at home without jobs but that this is not something exclusive to WAD. “Because there are university graduates with degrees and sometimes post graduate degrees who are sitting at home without jobs for many years,” he concluded.
Last year WAD trained 76 unemployed youth in Luderitz, 6 of them pursued their studies elsewhere, 3 have started their own income generating ventures and 6 found employment in the labour market.