Archbishop Porter Girls’ SHS wins Showcase
Archbishop Porter Girls’ Senior High School (SHS) on Monday emerged winners of the 2013 Project Citizen Showcase, after shrugging off fierce competition from St Francis Xavier SHS and Bolgatanga Girls’ SHS.
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The three schools had emerged finalists out of an earlier competition last Monday which involved the 10 regional winners and the 2012 national winner.
In a competition that requires SHS students to address major issues bedevilling the country, the two Catholic schools — Archbishop Porter and St Francis Xavier — ran neck-and-neck for the title, having thrilled the audience with their presentations at the national finals held in Accra.
But a comprehensive presentation on illegal mining in parts of the Western Region by the Takoradi-based Catholic Girls’ school gave the school the edge on the scorecards of the judges to dethrone the Wa-based Catholic Boys’ School which also put up a sterling performance in defence of the title won in 2012.
For their prizes, the champions received a plaque, a computer, a printer and a scanner, in addition to certificates for the participating students, while St Francis Xavier received a computer and a printer, plus certificates for the participating students for emerging second.
Bolgatanga Girls’, who took the third position, received a computer and certificates for the participating students.
Project Citizen
Project Citizen is an inter-disciplinary civic education programme organised by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) for students in junior and senior high schools.
The students, operating in groups, are required to identify specific issues in their communities to explore, and with the guidance of their teachers, gather information on the issues, proffer solutions and prepare action plans to address them.
Subsequently, they make presentations on their findings in the form of a competition dubbed, “the Project Citizen Showcase at the regional and national levels.
The objective of the programme, according to the NCCE, “is to motivate and enable young people to enjoy the rights and accept the responsibilities of citizenship”.
Furthermore, it is to help students to learn about governance, while sharpening their reading, writing, speaking and critical analysis skills.
Presentations
The criteria for the competition required the students to state a problem in their local communities, the causes and effects of the problem and existing policies to address it.
In addition, they were required to present alternative policy proposals and action plans with a budget to address the identified problem.
Focusing on the Mpohor and the Wassa East districts in the Western Region, the project team from Archbishop Porter highlighted the menace posed by illegal mining to the environment and the lives of the people.
They called for intense public education and the strict enforcement of laws to address the problem.
Furthermore, they stressed the need to train residents of mining communities in vocational and alternative livelihood ventures to discourage them from engaging in illegal mining.
Earlier, the seminarians from St Francis Xavier had set the ball rolling on the theme, “Advancing together”, and they made a strong case for increased women’s participation in local governance.
Using the Wa District Assembly as a case study, Team St Francis Xavier observed that out of the current 44 assembly members, only five were women.
They called for mass public education and affirmative action to address the problem, adding that there was the need to erase from the minds of people the notion that women were only meant to govern the kitchen and not at the local level.
When Bolgatanga Girls’ took their turn, they also made an insightful presentation on indiscriminate waste disposal, with Zaare, a suburb of Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region, as their case study.
After outlining the causes and effects of indiscriminate waste disposal, they proposed that all households in the Zaare community should have toilet facilities.
They also stressed the need for collective responsibility to address the problem, urging the district assembly, traditional rulers and the Environmental Protection Agency in particular to play a lead role in that regard.
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