The Italian Foreign Affairs ministry will be sponsoring 150 Sierra Leonean students in various vocational institutions.
The executive secretary of the Family Home Movement (FHM), Ernest Sesay, disclosed over the weekend to Awoko that the sponsorship would be done through the FHM as it was they who drew up the proposal three years ago to the Italian Foreign Affairs ministry.
Mr Sesay further disclosed that evaluation was done on the selection of these students as their backgrounds were traced coupled with their educational statuses.
He said the students were drawn from the Government Technical Institute, Murialdo, FAWE and St Joseph’s Makeni, and that they would be sponsored for three years unto the National Commission for Technical and Vocational (NCTVA).
The FHM’s executive secretary also explained other educational facilities the FHM was offering to young people for them to be self reliant. He spoke of the educational training that was going on at Manyekini where two Italian trainers were training 30 people who in turn would be training 150 people.
Speaking about other activities of the home, the executive secretary said apart from education, agriculture was one area they considered could develop a nation.
In that light, he went on, widows at Grafton were recently given a 35- seater bus in support of their agricultural programme.
In the area of health and child welfare, he disclosed that FHM was continuing linking with the ministry of Gender and Social Welfare by receiving from remand children that would be taken care of.
He said recently they received 30 children from the ministry who were taken care of at the interim care centre at Lakka, disclosing that some had already started attending schools.
He also said Fr. Joseph Berton, one of the people behind FHM who served as chaplain at the maximum prisons at Pademba Road, assisted in social and medical needs.
The home, he continued, supported three fishing communities at Old Wharf, Sussex and Tokeh as training was offered to fishermen and also the provision of two ice plant machine.
By Ishmael Bayoh