Guyana News Malala Yousafzai named youngest UN Messenger of Peace 50 students graduate from Zorg-en-Vlygt Sunrise Centre
GUYANA - Fifty students of the Guyana Foundation Sunrise Center, yesterday, graduated from the institution upon completion of their sixmonth course. The Guyana Foundation which is the parent organization set up its first Sunrise Center in the village of Zorg-en-Vlygt on the Essequibo Coast.
The centre provides counseling sessions and works closely with hospitals, churches and various community groups, in an effort to assist depressed individuals, as well as those who have contemplated suicide. The center’s main focus however, is to develop the skill-set of persons in Zorg-en-Vlygt and to enhance their access to economic opportunities. As such, training courses have been offered in a variety of areas, including hairdressing, photography, IT training, floral/craft/wedding planning, music lessons, leather craft, massage techniques, soap-making, catering techniques and practices, makeup artistry and more, all cost free. Founder of the Guyana Foundation, Mrs. Supriya Singh-Bodden, said that the centre provides an opportunity for many to come and develop a skill for free. She added, “Once graduated these students can take their new skills back into their communities and venture into their own businesses. We have being trying to make provisions to assist students that would have completed a catering course, by just setting up a small shop so that they can get their firmly established catering business.” Mrs. Singh-Bodden said that initially the Guyana Foundation recognized a need, and was determined to develop a holistic approach to address the issues which had been identified. These included depression and hopelessness, joblessness and the need for empowerment of women and young people. She said that she believes the Zorgen-Vlygt Sunrise Centre has made rapid progress over the past six months, particularly in training and empowering of youths.
(kaieteurnews.com) Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai has been appointed a UN Messenger of Peace to promote girls education, more than four years after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head. At 19, Yousafzai is the youngest Messenger of Peace, the highest honor given by the UN for an initial period of two years.
She was also the youngest person to win the Nobel peace prize in 2014 when she was 17. The Pakistani education activist came to prominence when she was shot in the head in 2012 as she was leaving school in Pakistan’s Swat valley, northwest of the country’s capital Islamabad. She was targeted for her campaign against efforts by the Taliban to deny women education. “You are not only a hero, but you are a very committed and generous person,” UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres told Yousafzai. Other current Messengers of Peace include actors Leonardo di Caprio (climate change), Charlize Theron (prevention of HIV and elimination of violence against women), and Michael Douglas (disarmament). Yousafzai has become a regular speaker on the global stage and visited refugee camps in Rwanda and Kenya last July to highlight the plight of refugee girls from Burundi and Somalia.
In January 2009, Yousafzai began to keep a diary for the
Urdu service, in which she detailed how she had been affected by the Taliban’s rule, and what life was like for her and her peers under them.
(aljazeera.com)