By Emmanuel Gamson
Tamale, March 29, GNA – Beneficiaries of ANZANSI Study Project, an initiative being implemented by BasicNeeds-Ghana, a non-governmental organization (NGO), have shared their experiences on how the project had impacted their lives.
They also shared the successes they had gained through the skills and knowledge acquired from the intervention.
The project, being implemented in 10 Junior High Schools (JHS) in the Tamale Metropolis and the Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern Region, sought to empower female JHS students who could have dropped out of school, and migrated to urban centres, to take-up initiatives that would aid their growth and development.
The two-year project is being implemented in collaboration with the Washington University in the United States of America (USA) and the School of Public Health of the University of Ghana, with funding support from the National Institute of Mental in the USA.
It combined two approaches, including; Family Economic Empowerment which enabled caretakers to plan for their girl child through the opening of Child Development Accounts (CDA) to pay for the education expenses of the child.
The Multi-Family Group session also promotes cordial relations between parents and their girls, while addressing familiar social and community barriers to their well-being.
At a close-out meeting on the Multi-Family Group session of the Project, in Tamale, some beneficiaries said they utilized the skills and knowledge gained in the session to provide social support to their girls and strengthened family cohesion and determined the roles of the children.
They said the project also inculcated in them, the habit of savings to support the education of their girls and provide the needed start-up capital when the child decides to venture into small enterprises of their choice after completing their JHS education.
They further said the project had helped them to be responsible in ensuring that their girls do not go wayward, but, take their education seriously to help them realize their potentials and dreams.
Mr Kingsley Kumbelim, ANZANSI Study Project Coordinator at BasicNeeds Ghana, said the project sought to put together interventions that would help to reduce rural-urban migratory pattern and involvement in child labour among poverty-impacted female youth in the Northern Region.
He added that it also sought to reduce school drop-out and increase enrollment of girls in schools to guarantee development in the region.
He appealed to policymakers to formulate policies that would prioritize girls education and provide the needed support to them to discourage them from travelling from their communities to engage in kayaye.
GNA