By Lydia Kukua Asamoah, GNA
Accra, Dec 12, GNA – The First Lady, Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo has called for the local communities to get actively involved in efforts at helping to educate adolescent girls both in the formal and informal sectors to enable them become empowered in the society.
“The challenges to educating our girls remain daunting, ranging from financial constraints to social and cultural injustices.
“The remedies to these multifaceted and interrelated issues must be policy based and will require an active involvement of our communities”, Mrs. Akufo-Addo said.
She was launching a project dubbed “Because I want to Be”, aimed at utilising community platforms to improve the reproductive and economic well-being of adolescent girls through education.
She said it was through education that the vicious cycle of poverty could be broken.
“It is indisputable that education has been the best weapon for breaking the vicious cycle of poverty in most families.”
She asked that school children, especially girls, were given the opportunity including financial assistance to realise their full potentials whilst providing vocational skills training to those who dropped out of school.
The project is being jointly implemented by the Office of the First Lady and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and intended to provide social safety nets for poor and vulnerable girls in the society, to ensure uninterrupted education for the girl child and provide skills training for young women who had dropped out of school.
A study conducted in nine communities along the coast in the Greater Accra region namely: James Town, Bukom, Chorkor, Bortianor, Doryumu, Adakope, Akplabanya, Teshie and La, has revealed that poverty, teenage pregnancy, lack of educational facilities in schools as well as some cultural practices are factors that motivate girls to give birth rather than concentrate on schooling.
Mrs. Akufo-Addo said the initiative would focus on seeing to girls’ education – making sure that no one was left behind.
She said girls’ who had dropped out of school or at risk of dropping out, would be identified and supported - to retain them.
Those unable to return to school would be assisted to acquire skills that would make them economically self-dependent.
The First Lady urged parents to take full advantage of the many education-friendly policies of the government to put their children in school.
She underlined the determination of her Foundation - the Rebecca Foundation, to continue work to make a difference in the lives of women and children.
Dr Robert Mensah, Reproductive Health Specialist with the UNFPA, said the “Because I Want To Be” project was a wonderful initiative which would not only afford adolescents the opportunity to complete their education or acquire vocational skills, but even more importantly, would create the fertile platform for them to develop to their full potential, believe in themselves and break the shackles of poverty.
He gave the assurance of the UNFPA’s continuous support of The Rebecca Foundation in the implementation of projects and programmes that impacted positively on the larger society, especially women and children.
GNA
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