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Locally made fabric is likely to receive massive boost during this year�s Homowo (festival) in La as the constituency Member of Parliament urges traditional authorities and residents to use locally made materials to revive the hitherto attractive festival. Nii Amasah Namoale, the Member of Parliament for La Dadekotopon, initiating this noble objective said: �I�m happy we are all going to celebrate Homowo this year, but we have to do it as a people with some identity. �Let�s all resolve to sow a dress using our own local material, sown by our own sisters and brothers who are into dressmaking and let us look unique to make the beginning of a new awakening in La,� Nii Namoale said on Saturday when he addressed 30 newly trained seamstresses under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) and ACI & EP Joint Initiative in La. Appealing to the traditional authorities and residents to embrace the idea, the MP said he hoped the idea would be accepted by all to foster unity, and a sense of purpose that would help to promote development in La and the constituency at large. This, he noted, would not only promote unity and love, but also create job opportunities for the many tailors and seamstresses that are in La whose levels of income would also rise to enable them to live decent and healthy. The celebration of Homowo (meaning hoot or jeer at hunger) is celebrated by Gas of the Greater Accra Region in remembrance of a famine. Nii Namoale advised the 30 female beneficiary seamstresses, who each received a Butterfly brand sewing machine to value the knowledge they had acquired and to see it as a springboard upon which their lives could be better transformed. �The knowledge you have acquired is general, but the difference as to who you will become, depends largely on how creative and innovative you will be. Add to the knowledge by learning new things, creating new designs and styles yourself. This is the only way you can excel and become recognized,� the MP said. Mr Lennox Apik, the Greater Accra Regional Coordinator of the NYEP/ACI & EP Initiative, said the partnership with Government was for Asongtaba Cottage Industry & Exchange Program (ACI & EP), a local NGO, to provide skill training and equipment support for beneficiaries in a number of vocations. He said the 30 sewing machines presented bring the number of dressmakers so far trained and supported with equipment to 1,000 in the region to complete the first phase of a target of 3,500 people. The second phase of 2,500 beneficiaries has taken off, he added, and indicated that vocations such as auto-mechanic and bee-keeping were yet to take-off in the region. Besides the training and equipment support, ACI & EP, Mr Apik said also facilitates the acquisition of soft loans for interested beneficiaries and indicated that monitoring and supervision of their businesses after the training formed an integral part of the programme.