NGO Advocates For Girl Child Education In Twifo Ati-Morkwa District
A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), United Africa Development Aid (UADA) in collaboration with Global Affairs Canada and Plan international, has reached out to rural communities in Twifo Ati-Morkwa district in the central region with a sensitization project on girl child education.
The project coordinator of the NGO, madam Phillipa Afran Gaisie, made the disclosure in an interview with newsmen in the district on Wednesday 24th November 2020, saying that the campaign was part of their regular duties in the region
Madam Philippa said the project was aimed at educating parents and their kids on the need to allow their children, especially girls, to attend school and acquire knowledge and entrepreneurial skills to enable them to contribute their quota to nation-building.
"We will sustain efforts to end child marriage" madam Philippa.
The project is aimed at educating community members to support girls education.
The activity that took place was Career Guidance and Counselling for girls, and the objective of this activity is to reduce girls dropout rate from school.
She said, the organisation tends to extend their activities to other communities and district since girls drop out ,teenage pregnancy and other girls related problems are dominant in the region.
The level of development of a people depends largely on their level of education . In Ghana, education is a fundamental right of every Ghanaian guaranteed by the 1992 constitution of the Republic of Ghana. In spite of this, the rate of illiteracy supersedes that of literacy, especially among girls and women.
In an interview with 1stnnews.blogspot.com, madam Philippa emphasized that, the research found that a lot of factors played together to impede girls education all over the world. They included poverty, cultural believes and traditional practices, teenage pregnancy, early marriage, gender roles, nature of education systems and insecurity.
Moreover, the survey on the study area found that, from the NGO perspective, the most dominant cause was Teenage Pregnancy while Poor Parenting was identified as the most common cause by the community respondents followed by Poverty.
Though the study found that the service provided by the NGO was substantial and critical to promoting girls education, it was found that the service provided was not enough to meet the challenge squarely. The study also found that other stakeholders fell short of meeting their responsibilities such that; the government as an overall service provider was not doing enough, some parents declined to send their girl children to school, the compliance of the beneficiaries with the NGO directives was weak and the community collaboration with NGO was bellow expectation. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that parents, as prime custodians of children, need be well oriented on their responsibility to educate their wards, particularly the girls. Government has to provide the necessary support so that the NGO, with well developed and strengthened capacities, can advocate this in the communities using realistic approaches; whiles opinion leaders and beneficiary families ensure high level of cooperation.
Story filed by; Odiasempa Kwaku Ahiaku, sweet fm-C/R
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