By Benjamin A. Commey
Okushibiri, near Tema (GAR), July 22, GNA – More than 20 girls of the Okushibiri KKMA Basic School in the Kpone Katamanso municipality of the Greater Accra Region are set to benefit from a mentorship programme initiated by the Glorious Women’s Linkage (GLOWLINK), a non governmental organisation.
The progrogramme, an initiative of the “GLOWLINK help a girl child to read (GLOWHAGTOR),” sought to provide guidance, support and encouragement to the young girls from the school to prepare them for the future.
The beneficiaries were selected from upper primary and Junior High School (JHS).
Announcing the initiative at an Outreach event in the community, Ms. Gloria Edem Akorli, Head of Department,GLOWHAGTOR , said the purpose of the mentorship programme was to provide the young girls with career guidance and life experiences to enable them to make better choices in life, including career selection.
She noted that more often than not girls from deprived communities were faced with many obstacles that prevented them from achieving their goals in life.
Most of them, she indicated, dropped out of school for different reasons, thereby becoming a nuisance to their families and communities.
Providing such girls with guidance, encouragement and support, as well as serving as role models, Ms. Akorli said would equip the girls with the requisite knowledge to enable them to make informed career and life decisions to become better persons.
“We are going to mentor them career-wise. Those who want to go into trade, social life. You see, nowadays they say the Gen Zs and the Gen Alphas, there are a lot of problems that is coming up, social media and all those things.
“So, we want to mentor them in a way that when you take one of them, you use them as a role model for others,” Ms Akorli explained.
Over the past decade the NGO has provided such mentorship to many girls from under and less privileged communities across the country.
The target, Ms. Akorli said, was to reach and mentor as many of such girls in hard-to-reach communities to enable them to contribute meaningfully to the development of their communities and the nation at large.
“We want to go to the hinterlands, we want to send this message there, Because it’s those places that you don’t see the girls going to school. They get to a point and then they drop out for various reasons. So we want to get to the hinterlands and educate these girls and their parents.
“At the end of the day, we want our achievements to be that we have been able to impact millions of girls, and then have evidence to show for it that this lady went through our mentorship,” she stressed.
She urged the beneficiaries to embrace the opportunity, take advantage of it to enable them to achieve their life’s goal.
The NGO, as part of the programme also donated school materials such as books, pens, pencils, erasers and bags, to the pupils to assist them in their education.
Mrs. Doris Mensah, Girls Education Officer, KKMA Education Directorate, who spoke at the same event, also charged the pupils, especially the girls, to prioritise their education, warning them against indulging in acts such as early sex, that would truncate their education and ruin their lives.
She explained that education was the key to attaining success, emphasising that when girls were educated, they were able to make informed and better choices in life and enable them to contribute meaningfully to the national development.
She urged the pupils to focus on their education, cautioning the them against seeking “quick money.”
“You have to suffer before you gain,” she stressed.
Mr. Seth Sotie, the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) Municipal Director for Kpone Katamanso, also stressed on the need for parents to educate their children irrespective of their sex or challenges, stressing that it was every child’s right to have access to education.
He also cautioned the parents against using their children in exploitative ventures such as arm begging and other hazardous activities, warning that the law would deal with them when they are found.
GLOWLINK is a word-based women’s network established to raise model Christian women leaders serving as role models and mentors to women globally.
GNA
Edited by Christian Akorlie