Connecting Kids Education Foundation provides library, ICT centre for KEEA school

Connecting Kids Education Foundation, (CKEF), a charitable organisation in the Central Region, has provided a library and Information Communication Technology (ICT) centre for the Abeyee M/A Basic School in the Komenda Edina Eguafo Abrem (KEEA) Municipality.

The presentation of the facility was the third of its kind by the organisation aimed at changing the teaching and learning attitude of both teachers and students to reflect on the academic performance of the school.

CKEF support

The foundation had provided similar support to the Besease and Anweem-Kumasi M/A Basic Schools, a support which had helped tremendously to improve the academic performance of students in these schools, with particular reference to their
Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

The schools, hitherto, were scoring zero with none of the students gaining admission to grade one schools such as the St Augustine’s College, Mfantsipim School, Adisadel College, Mfantseman Girls among others.

But some of the students from these schools in the 2019 BECE passed with good grades and gained admission to these top schools in the Central Region and beyond.

Library/ICT use

Addressing a durbar to mark the event, a former KEEA Director of Education, Mr Gabriel Gademor, advised the students to make effective use of the facility as it would provide them with additional and further knowledge for present and future development.

He said with the dispensation of the 21st-century technology, library as a source of information had been simplified by the use of ICT which was now on mobile phones and by a click of a button, one could access information of all kinds.

He ,therefore, urged them to use the technology to access information that were relevant to their study in school and their environment.

Mr Gademor thanked the foundation and appealed to the organisation to extend the facility to other deprived schools in the municipality to help improve their academic performance.

Appeal

The Director of the CKEF, Mrs Ellen Blamires, on her part, said besides the library and the centre, the foundation had plans to raise funds to supply deprived schools with furniture to reduce the class sizes of 80 students and above to 35 students.

“We are currently working with the educational directorate to provide more teachers, but fundamentally, we need more desks,” she said.

She said in order to see the returns on the investment and the government’s efforts which, ultimately, would better BECE students, “the time is ripe for an all hands on deck action.

“These initiative, hopefully, are keys to the needed change in attitude towards education and a way out of teenage pregnancies and other related challenges facing our communities,” she said.

The General Manager Antrak Ghana Limited, one of the sponsors of the project, Mr Jeff Lokko, said his company decided to be part of the ICT project because of the value it placed on education, particularly for institutions in the deprived areas.

He , therefore, pledged to replicate the gesture in some deprived areas in the region to support the development of education.

Capacity building

The Country Coordinator of CKEF, Ms Esther Obeng Antwi Dankyi, said the project was christened “capacity-building project” to complement the government’s free Senior High School (SHS) efforts, adding “our goal is building the less fortunate who are ready and committed to work for a change”.

“How can we ensure rural communities compete with the likes of the GIS and big schools such as the Ghana National College, the St Augustine and the Adisadel College?” she asked.

She said the foundation would motivate teachers and bring awareness of parents that education was key to development which needed collaborative efforts to achieve.