Asikuma Odobeng Brakwa District gets 4 classroom blocks from CARE International

“CARE International” in partnership with “General Mills” has gifted the Asikuma Odobeng Brakwa District with 4 classroom blocks.

The project comes as the organizations’ efforts to aid in the fight against ‘child labor’, especially in cocoa growing communities.

The projects consist of a two-unit classroom block, an office, store and other salient facilities.  Also, CARE has furnished all the classrooms with a total of one hundred and forty (140) dual desks as well as teachers’ tables and chairs, to facilitate teaching and learning.

The structures, worth a total of GHS466,000 is expected to serve over 260 pupils from six neighboring communities including Sunkwa, Aniehu, Bonsunyina, Abotia and Asare Kwaa.

The project which was completed within three years has been lauded by the District Assembly, chiefs and people in the area considering the deteriorating nature of the existing school structures and the lack of some basic educational infrastructure in the area.

Until now, children from adjoining cocoa growing communities in the district had to walk more than 2 kilometers before accessing education. The situation made many students drop out of school to follow their parents to their cocoa farms while many girls in the area became teenage mothers.

The Asikuma-Odobeng-Brakwa District, earlier this year experienced one of the most tragic happenings in the educational history of the country when a dilapidated kindergarten school block collapsed and killed six KG pupils at Breman Gyamera.

Speaking at the ceremony to hand the keys of the newly constructed school projects to the headteachers of the 4 schools, Dr. Theophilus Nkansah, Team leader and Project Manager of CARE, expressed optimism that the project would help put smiles on the faces of many parents and educational authorities.

“Educational infrastructure remains a big challenge in rural communities across the country and our aim is to improve school infrastructure in rural communities especially in cocoa growing communities where the issue of child labor is rife,” he said.

District Chief Executive for Asikuma Odobeng Brakwa, Isaac Odoom, who could not hide his excitement at the gesture by the NGO, thanked the CARE-General Mills partnership for lessening the burden of the Assembly to provide educational infrastructure.

He also urged the schools’ management committees to ensure that the facilities were properly kept and maintained.

“We made a lot of interventions after the school block collapsed and killed the six kindergarten school children. Most of the schools here do not have well-structured KG blocks heightening our fears. We are encouraging more organizations to come to our aid,” he stressed.

“We believe that education is a shared responsibility between government, represented by the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, community leaders and members, as well as development agencies.

"We are indeed happy that we’ve been able to make it. By this, we have cultivated into the future of these young ones”, Mr. Elkanah Odembo, HR/Administration Director of CARE said in a speech read on his behalf by Mr. Richard Oppong who is the Director of CARE in Ghana.

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