Employees of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), has donated dressmaking tools and other items all valued at GH¢ 3,000.00 to the Nsawam Female Prisons.

They include electric and manual sewing machines, knitting machine, pressing irons, pair of scissors, tape measures, wooden ruler, sewing treads, bundles of calico caustic soda, hydro and assorted dyes colours.

The aim is to provide the female inmates with employable skills to enhance their livelihood after their release from prison.

The funds were raised through the AWDF Employees Workplace Giving which aims at projects that matches the employees’ values and interests and that of the AWDF.

Presenting the items Mrs Abigail Burgesson, Special Programmes Manager of the Fund, said the donation was in recognition of the fact that women in prison faced challenges including inadequate skills.

She said the items would go a long way to ensure that female ex-convicts were trained to be self-reliant, reduced socio-economic problems in families of ex-convicts, to minimize the rate of recidivism among female ex-convicts and also to make them useful to larger society.

Mrs Burgesson said the AWDF staff believed that as a fundraising and grant-making organization, it was important to demonstrate that through the work they do, saying “We are also making contributions from our salaries to address the developmental needs of the others.”

She said through the contributions, the staff in 2010 provided the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital Mothers Hostel with two large poly-tanks connected for water supply to the hostel.

Chief Superintendent of Prisons (CSP), Mrs Margaret J. Dangah, Officer In-Charge of the Nsawam Female Prison, said the donation would go a long way to help the inmates in acquiring skills.

She said the skills acquired by the inmates in the prisons would serve as successful re-integration and also reduce crime rate in various societies.

CSP Mrs Dangah noted that most of the inmates were sentenced for committing minor crimes such as stealing, adding “If they acquire skills and they are release, they can make a living…”

She thanked the AWDF employees for the gesture and their commitment to support female prison inmates and appealed for more support from individuals and institutions.

In the past, AWDF received support from Hewlett Packard (HP), a computer and Accessories Company in the USA, through its Employees Workplace Giving, to fund community based projects in Ghana.

GNA