The National Youth Council recently celebrated their 14-year anniversary with a day symposium at the Friendship Hostel in Bakau.
The activity also followed on Resolution 15 of the 10th Edition of NAYCONF, which called on NYC to celebrate 28th March as the National Youth Day.
NYC programme manager Lamin Darboe said the celebration showcased the success of young people but the declaration is yet to be made.
He added that they would continue to celebrate the success registered and are aware as council that there are lots of actors in the field, which would serve as a platform for interaction.
Speaking at the symposium, the coordinator of NEDI, Lamin Sanneh, highlighted the establishment of NYC as a means to empower the youth of the country.
He said the council should establish their plans so the youth could participate in meaningful development, including agriculture.
He said this was why the youth were given soft loan inputs such as fertilizer and seed implements to encourage the philosophy of “eat what you grow and grow what you eat”.
He said NEDI was established to encourage youth participation in business to arrest unpatriotic increases of prices of goods and services in the country.
“It is very dangerous for our enterprises to be dominated by foreigners and it is against this background NEDI was established, so as to empower the youth in order to contribute to national development and to empower youths and women to be entrepreneurs by giving them loan,” he said.
The executive director of the National Youths Service Scheme (NYSS), Emmanuel Mendy, said the cardinal principle of the NYSS is to inculcate discipline in and expose the youths to marketable skills so they could be employed or self-employed, adding that the government is aware of the contribution of the youth to nation building.
It is against the background of the youth considered the future leaders that the government decided to establish the NYSS to give the youth the requisite skills to be industrious entrepreneurs.