Camfed Ghana, a non-governmental organisation, that promotes girl- child education and rights in Africa, on Thursday, engaged the media in Tamale to brief them on the works and achievements of the organisation over the years.
The one-day engagement dubbed “CAMFED Ghana-Media Partnership Meeting” was also to solicit the support of the journalists in and around the Northern Region to promote the programmes and activities of CAMFED.
It was attended by members of the ink fraternity from the Northern, Savanna and North East Regions of Ghana.
Present at the meeting was also the Northern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and former Northern Regional Correspondent of the Ghanaian Times, Mr Yakubu Abdul-Majeed.
The Head of Finance and Operations at CAMFED Ghana, Madam Fairuza Safian, in a welcome address, said the organisation had developed a five-year new strategic plan aimed at supporting five million girls to attend and thrive in schools.
She said within the next few years, CAMFED Ghana under the new strategy, would expand its workforce by making use of girls who pass through them, partner with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Ed
ucation Service to roll out a mentoring programme through young women graduates to provide social support to girls in schools, expand young women’s livelihood opportunities and build their capacities to provide economic support to girls.
“We at CAMFED value and cherish the role that the media play in the socio-economic development of any society. In light of this, we have worked to build a mutual-beneficial strategic partnership with the Ghanaian Media as partners in development,” she stated
A programme manager at the CAMFED Ghana, Mr Candace Bentil, in a presentation, indicated that as part of their strategies to promote girl-child education, the CAMFED Ghana was implementing a peer-to-peer support learning platform dubbed “Learner Guide” to help decrease the gender gap and retention in schools as well as changing social norms around girls’ education.
He also said they were investing in enterprise development for girls and young women to create a better, and enabling business environment for the marginalised and rural women.
On his part, the Head of Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) at CAMFED, Mr Samuel Asare-Danquah, explained that since its inception in 1998, 559, 899 students had benefited from the organisation.
He said a total of 90, 449 had been supported to complete secondary school through CAMFED-funded scholarships, adding that 2,400 teacher mentors had been trained to support girls in 1,189 schools within their working areas.
Mr Asare-Danquah added that 12,642 CAMFED Association Members had been trained in business skills with over 84,846 businesses in operations through the CAMFED loans and grants support scheme.
He stated: “CAMFED has established three ICT Centres in rural areas which are run by CAMFED Association Members, CAMFED has partnered with the Master card Foundation to implement the Young Africa Works programme, the Master card Foundation’s strategy to enable 30 million Young Africans to secure dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.”
The Northern Regional Chairman of the GJA, Mr Yakubu Abdul-Majeed, in his remarks, urged members of the association, to always be guided by the ethics and principles of the profession.
He also thanked CAMFED Ghana for always supporting the media with the needed data for their publicity, and pledged the continuous collaboration of media to CAMFED’s activities.
FROM TIMES REPORTER, TAMALE
The post CAMFED to support education of 5m girls appeared first on Ghanaian Times.
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