By Yussif Ibrahim
Kyebi (Ash), July 29, GNA – Kyebi, a farming community in the Offinso Municipality, was filled with excitement when basic schools in the community were presented with furniture and other teaching and learning materials.
This was part of remediation efforts under a child labour project being implemented in the community.
The project dubbed, “Making Advances to Eliminate Child Labour in More Areas with Sustainable Integrated Efforts (MATE MASIE), is being implemented by Winrock International with funding from the United States Department of Labor (USDOL).
MATE MASIE is working through four cocoa cooperatives including Offinso Fine Flavour Cooperative Cocoa Farmers and Marketing Society and monitoring and law enforcement agencies in Ghana, to combat child labour in four Districts in Ashanti Region – Adansi South, Atwima Mponua, Atwima Nwabiagya, and Offinso Municipality.
As part of the needs assessment conducted in participating communities, OFFCOP local partners of Winrock International, identified lack of furniture and learning materials as some of the key challenges in Kyebi Community, one of the three communities the cooperative is implementing the project in.
The project, therefore, procured 60 dual desks, 120 mono desks, 12 marker boards, 15 ICT learning charts, 15 science learning charts, 135 JHS textbooks, and 108 primary textbooks for the two basic schools in the community.
The presentation was done at a colourful durbar when a team of officials from the National Steering Committee on Child Labour and the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations (MELR), joined Winrock International to assess the impact of the MATE MASIE project at Kyebi and seven other communities.
All stakeholders in Kyebi including chiefs, parents, Community Child Protection Committee (CCPC) members, parents, children, and teachers were present to witness what they described as one of the most impactful interventions the community had seen in education for many years.
Some community members expressed excitement about the many benefits the MATE MASIE project brought them.
They applauded Winrock International and its partners for the laudable initiative of addressing critical needs of the community to enable them eliminate child labour.
“We are eternally grateful to Winrock for bringing the MATE MASIE project to our community.
It has positively impacted our lives including our children,” Kofi Amponsah, a middle-aged man from Kyebi testified.
He said the interventions being implemented under the project were improving their livelihoods and securing their children’s future.
Officials of the joint delegation took turns to reiterate the importance of prioritising the education of their children as a way of breaking the poverty cycle in their families.
They advised parents in Kyebi to desist from exposing their children to hazardous and other works in their farming activities that were beyond their strength in order not to retard their growth and development.
Mr. Alex Opoku Mensah, President of OFFCOP, said child labour awareness level of farmers in the participating communities had increased significantly, thereby bringing down the incidence of child labour in those communities.
He praised Winrock International for impacting thousands of lives across the four districts and pledged the commitment of the cooperative to sustain the project beyond the life cycle of MATE MASIE.
GNA