The Ghana Society for the Socially Disadvantaged, a vocational school located at Kaneshie in Accra is a not-for-profit facility, established in 1958 by an NGO to provide skills training for persons with disabilities to enable them to achieve economic independence and to live meaningful lives, while contributing to the progress of the country.
The school provides accommodation, feeding, and training; and also gives tools and materials to graduating trainees, all for free. The training duration is three years.
It has over the years, trained thousands of youths with disabilities in leather works, dressmaking, bead making, as well as literacy education.
Its activities have significantly impacted the disability community in Ghana. It is the second such major facility in the national capital after the Accra Rehabilitation Center, which is state-owned.
The centre is currently in dire need of support to enable it to serve its patrons well.
According to the Manageress of the centre, Madam Evelyn Ampadu, the school needs expansion of the classrooms, dormitories, and dining hall.
The whole facility needs repainting and construction of a fence wall, since the current one is in very bad state.
Madam Evelyn Ampadu is calling on philanthropists, organisations, and all well-meaning Ghanaians to come to the aid of the school.
She also urges persons with disabilities to walk into their facility at any time for training to empower themselves economically.
Madam Evelyn was speaking in an interview with DisabilityNewsGH.com recently when a lecturer at the University of Ghana handed over some access ramps she constructed for the school.
Dr. Augustina Naami, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Work constructed 9 access ramps at various entrances at the school to aid easy mobility, especially for those with physical disability.
Madam Evelyn was full of praise for Dr. Naami for the gesture, adding that the ramps would make life easy for the trainees.
She discloses that the absence of access ramps at the facility was causing serious inconvenience and embarrassment for the trainees who sometimes fell off their wheelchairs and crutches while trying to access their washrooms and bathrooms.
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SOURCE: DisabilityNewsGH.com