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Walter Mswazie in MASVINGO
About 2 000 youths and women in Mwenezi and Chiredzi districts are set to benefit from a $225 000 empowerment programme availed by Plan International Zimbabwe in partnership with Government, an official has said.

The programme has already seen 356 beneficiaries in both Chiredzi and Mwenezi undergoing a four-month training course at Mushagashe Training Centre near Masvingo city.

This comes on the back of a Memorandum of Understanding between Plan International and the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment.

The ministry’s Masvingo provincial head Mr June Mbizvo said the programme, which started in 2016 and ending in 2019, will benefit a total of 1 550 youths and women in the two districts. He said the courses being undertaken were demand driven and community based.

“The programme will see 1 550 youths and women in Mwenezi and Chiredzi undergoing training in a number of disciplines of their choice,” said Mr Mbizvo.

He said the programme sought to empower community members through instilling hands on skills that could help them to create employment for themselves, within their environs.

“The courses taken by the youths who should be 35 years old or below and women who should be 59 years and below are demand driven and community based,” said Mr Mbizvo. “The programme is an Integrated Skills Outreach (ISO) programme where the training is done in communities and not at a training centre.

“The courses are according to the needs of the community and they include bricklaying, mechanics and driving lessons. We already have 30 youths in Mwenezi who have passed their oral driving lessons and are waiting for road tests.

“Mushagashe Training Centre in Masvingo is responsible for training those that have enrolled for four months, one month being meant for theory, while three are for attachment.”

Mr Mbizvo said Chiredzi would have 1 000 youths and women from six wards trained, while 550 had been drawn from Mwenezi’s three wards.

He said the monitoring and evaluation was done by Plan International in conjunction with the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment.

Mr Mbizvo said the idea to train youths and women in communities was in line with the aspirations of Zim-Asset, which supports the growing of the economy through developing communities.