By Fatoumatta Conteh / Mustapha Jallow
Babucarr Cham, the Chairperson of Sukuta Village Development Committee (VDC), recently said that the construction of a multi-purpose skills centre worth over four million dalasi or sixty-nine thousand, seven hundred and ninety seven US Dollars ($69,797 US dollars), will be completed in 2023.
According to Cham, the piece of land where the centre is currently being built, was occupied by the former VISACA of Sukuta village, now turned into a multi-purpose skill centre, where community members believed could be used as a way to address their needs and other issues affecting them, particularly the young-people.
Cham made this revelation during the 4th year celebration of the Sukuta Week Edition-2022, on 24th December, 2022. Every year, the community will observe the event through walking from the Sukuta traffic lights to their Bantaba, where they will hold different activities such as dialogues, cultures, spelling/debate competition at schools, football matches, and marathons among others.
The aim for constructing these multi-skill-centre, was to engage young people to become more innovative and productive, to enable them contribute to the socioeconomic development of the community and country as well. It would also help them (young-people) to nurture their talents and develop employable skills in their community.
However, Cham said the activity was meant to bring the community together, saying this would help his people to address their internal problems and move forward to another level.
“It is meant to encourage dialogues, learning of culture and promotion of talents,’’ he added.
The theme for the event, according to Cham, was based on women and health in order to raise more awareness that will enable women to participate in social issues and also help them to promote health benefits in their community.
“There was a competition among the schools held at the Sukuta Primary school and the competition focused on spellings and debates. The Nursery school did lettering, identifying numbers and symbols. In the end, there was a marathon, walk for health and football competition between different segments of the community,’’ he expounded.
Normally, according to Cham, the events are sponsored by members of the community in the diaspora. But this year, he added, the marathon and walk-for-health was sponsored by Neighbourhood Medical Clinic.
“Since we are not health experts, we thought of hiring a health personnel to help us educate our people about the common diseases or sicknesses affecting people across the world. It will help them to adhere to these issues, so they would protect themselves from any disease,’’ he said.
Cham finally highlighted some of the achievements they made in the community, especially on the issues of the Sukuta Health Centre because the infrastructure was built by them, and most of the facilities in the health-centre were also provided by them.
