By Samuel Akumatey
Kpogede (V/R), Oct. 29, GNA – Mama Hodzige II, Central Tongu Director of the National Commission for Civic Education, (NCCE) has said parents should consider the basic needs of their children requisite for the needed control over their upbringing.
She said challenges with securing the essential life needs of children affected the effectiveness of the roles of parents and caused honor and authority to be shared with peers and other entities that could offer any help.
Mama Hodzige was addressing the community of Kpogede in the Central Tongu District during a parent-child inter-generational dialogue on sexual and reproductive health and rights, organized by the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG).
She said the responsibility over the healthcare, food, shelter and other needs should become paramount for parents, and advised them not to lose the parental bonds, but strengthen to build an impermeable family unit.
“The responsibility over food, healthcare, and other basic needs should be paramount for parents. The inability to meet these things affects the parents’ control over their children,” she stated.
The engagement gave voice to parents and children who had been assembled at the compound of the headman of the community.
Children shared challenges with upkeep, a situation not uncommon in the rural agrarian economies, and which lends wind to early sexual activity including abuse among the youth.
Communities in the Tongu districts ranked among the highest in teen pregnancies and child marriages, and the PPAG has been actively pursuing behavioural change in selected endemic areas in collaboration with stakeholders including the social welfare, police domestic violence unit, and the NCCE.
This comes under a five-year program of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and which is being supported by Global Affairs Canada.
Barbara Amartefio, a social worker in the district, spoke of the need to enhance parent-child bond to be able to effectively ensure should upbringing.
She said new media significantly affected parent-child communication and should be used to educate children on social issues including sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Kenneth Goka, Project Officer of the PPAG, told parents there was no end to child upbringing, and said it was a continuous activity that must prevail on behavioral change.
He said the vision of reducing teenage pregnancy and early marriages would help safeguard the future of the nation and advised children to heed advice from elders and stakeholders.
Christopher Makam, PPAG Field Officer in the District, told the Ghana News Agency that poor parenting had been found to be one of the major causes of sexual and gender-based violence, and that the intergenerational dialogue should be able to help parents bridge communication gaps to their children.
He said parents were being encouraged not to consider the child’s inquiries around sex and reproduction intimidating, and to realize the cost of ignorance.
“This forum will help improve the dialogue among parents and their children. It will help expose barriers to communication in the home and will be able to identify solutions to the barriers,” he said.
He said stakeholders within the communities played vital roles and were the “back bones of social change,” and that it was important to empower them to help encourage parents.
The PPAG runs a “sisters club” in the various communities it operates, providing livelihood empowerment skills for adolescent girls and teen mothers, and raising ambassadors of sexual and reproductive health and rights.
John Fiagbenu, Headman of the community told the gathering that the youth were considered the future, and that education should continue to be regarded the way to elevating the status of the area.
He commended the efforts of the PPAG and their stakeholders, particularly in attempting to deal with the menace of drug and substance abuse blanketing youths of the farming community.
GNA