Accra Gathering Place Exhibition Emphasizes Self Reliance

Representatives of the community joined with local Church leaders and youth to participate in an exhibition of the Gathering Place in Accra, Ghana on 16 November, 2024.  The event featured a program with talks followed by a tour of booths showcasing the various skills and trades taught at the local Gathering Place.

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The Gathering Place, a program instituted by the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is organized and operated by individual stakes across West Africa. Open to young adults of any faith, and free of charge, the program offers classes taught by qualified professionals who provide technical and vocational training for the purpose of helping participants become self-reliant as well as helping them become responsible future leaders.

The exhibition was preceeded by a program of specially invited speakers that included representatives from the University College of Design and Technology in Accra, the Environmental protection Agency, the Ghana Police Service, and the spokesperson for the National Chief Imam of Ghana. Local priesthood leaders also participated in the event.  Speakers generally focused on the importance of becoming self-reliant but ranged through topics that included entrepreneurship, kpeace building and security, protecting the environment, and becoming spirityallly as well as economically self-reliant. Professor Kingsley Nyarko, Deputy Minister for Education in charge of Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) participated as the keynote Guest Speaker.

President Jeffrey Botchwawy, stake president of the Accra Ghana Teshie Stake and Institute Director for the Ashiaman Campus Institute of the Church, kicked off the meeting by describing how The Gathering Place is designed to help young adults develop skills that will save them money and benefit them in life.  But he also acknowlewdged that another primary purpose of TheGathering place is for young people to interact and get to know each other as well as to get to know the Savior through Institute and other means.

Sheikh Aremeyaw Shaibu, representing the National Chief Imam, emphasized that while intellectual and marketable trade skills are important, perhaps more important is the need to develop spiritual self-reliance. In a time when there is such turmoil in the world, the need for spiritual self-reliance is essential.