By Dorothy Frances Ward
Kumasi, Oct 19, GNA – Police and security personnel in and around the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) have been urged to help combat juvenile crime around the campus and its surrounding communities.
The growing menace of juvenile crime and vulnerability among children around those areas was a social responsibility, and all stakeholders must help curb the menace, Mrs Evelyn Deladem Ansi, the Founder of Nurturing Dreams Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), has said.
The NGO is dedicated to empowering the underprivileged youth and women through character-based skills training.
She told the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi that the increase in crime rate among children in the area was worrying.
Most of those children were pupils from government basic schools at Ayeduase, Kotei and Deduako, she said, and that a survey her NGO conducted showed that most of them were not living with their biological parents.
Some of them also lived with their teenage mothers and, therefore, lacked parental control, making them vulnerable to negative influences such as substance abuse and prostitution.
The research also revealed a distressing pattern of poor academic performance among them in school.
“Some of the pupils could score as low as 20 per cent in their examinations, and a significant portion of these students struggle with basic literacy skills, unable to read and write effectively,” she stated.
Mrs Ansi said her organisation was working to address some of those challenges with initiatives like counselling and putting them in some skills and vocational training.
She said the situation demanded a collaborative effort from the Government and all stakeholders to ensure that those vulnerable children were given a better future.
“These young minds must not be left to fall victims to the perils of their environment.”
She said the organisation would soon launch a project, dubbed: “Every Child has Potentials,” to help vulnerable children uncover their potentials and train them to nurture those skills for a better future.
GNA