‘Encourage teenage mothers to further education’
The Ashanti Regional Director of Education, Mrs Mary Owusu-Achiaw, has advised mothers and relatives of teenage girls who deliver while schooling to encourage them to go back to school to enable them to further their education.
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She said although it was morally wrong for teenagers to get pregnant while in school, “preventing them from going back to school rather worsens their plight and creates more problems for the young mothers and the entire family as well.”
Mrs Owusu-Achiaw gave the advice in an address read for her by the Regional Girls Education Co-ordinator, Mrs Emma Amoateng Mensah, at the opening of this year’s Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) Ghana/MasterCard leadership camp in Kumasi.
The one-week camping, on the theme: “Transforming young women into great ladies,” has brought together over 1500 senior high school female students, who are beneficiaries of the MasterCard Foundation Scholarship package.
They were drawn from deprived communities in the Central, Northern, and the Upper East and West regions.
The project is a collaboration between CAMFED Ghana and the MasterCard Foundation to provide quality education and comprehensive support for academically gifted young women from rural Ghana, who are in need, to go through secondary and tertiary education.
Benefits
The scholarship takes care of the needs of the girls, including fees, examination registration fees, school uniforms, other educational materials and financial packages.
The girls are going through lessons on ‘giving back to community,’ ‘goal setting,’ ‘role-modelling’ and ‘hands-on personal and community leadership activities,’ as well as ‘problem-solving skills.’
They will also spend time with the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana to be enlightened on maturation issues and hold brush up sessions on Mathematics and English.
Commendation
The regional director commended CAMFED Ghana for supporting the girls, saying it will go a long way to improve their academic performance and also harness their leadership potentials.
The Director of Finance and Operations, CAMFED Ghana, Mr John Asibi Ali, said the scholarship scheme was to contribute towards raising leaders who were competent in social, political and business issues.
He said it also sought to build a network of visionary educators in second cycle schools and universities who shared the objectives of inclusive, equitable and high quality education.
The Queenmother of the Efutu Traditional Area, Nana Amba Eyiaba I, who chaired the function, stated that the transformation, holistic and proper training of children, especially girls, should be the responsibility of all.
She urged the girls not to allow men to distract their attention but remain focused and learn hard to attain their dreams so that their parents and the nation would be proud of them.