Organisation launches project to return dropouts to school
A project that seeks to locate school dropouts at Glefe, a slum community at Dansoman in Accra, with the goal to send them back to school has been launched in Accra.
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Being spearheaded by the Dansoman branch of Junior Chamber International (JCI) Ghana Chapter, the project is targeting a minimum of 500 children annually for the next five years.
Dubbed the Community Sanitation Education Project (COSEP), the initiative will also focus on embarking on sanitation campaign with the goal to reducing the piles of refuse and filth that have plagued the community.
Research results
At the launch in Accra, the Dansoman branch President of JCI Ghana Chapter, Ms Hawa Mohammed, said the institution came up with the project after a research it conducted revealed that more children were dropping out of school at Glefe, a coastal community near Dansoman.
“JCI has a community project Christened the Active Citizen Framework. This project focuses on studying the needs of the people within a community coming up with a programme to address them,” she explained.
For Glefe, Ms Mohammed said, the institution realised that more children were dropping out of school because of the inability of their parents to sponsor them.
“We realised that these children, after they have dropped out of school, tend to loiter around and engage in various activities that cause poor sanitation conditions,” she said.
Ms Mohammed said most of the school dropouts also undertook meagre jobs at the Glefe seashore in order to earn a living.
“This is why we have decided to target at least 500 children yearly and send them back to school to help them learn how to read and write,” she added.
Ms Mohammed said if nothing was done about the situation at Glefe, most of the children would grow up to engage in other social vices.
Funding for the project
She said the institution was relying on the monthly contribution made by the members to fund the project, adding, “JCI is also relying on the support of some partners.”
So far, she said, some individuals and partners of JCI had donated books to support the project.
“We have received books from PV bookshop and Cep, a non-governmental organisation,” she added.
Ms Mohammed, therefore, called on Ghanaians to help the institution to execute the project, adding, “We need more teachers to teach on weekends and any other financial support.”
JCI determined
The National President of JCI Ghana Chapter, Mr Stephen Kweku Darku, said the institution would continue to come up with programmes that would help empower the youth to become good citizens.
He also said JCI would embark on many initiatives in the coming months, as their contribution to national growth and youth development.
JCI Ghana, since its re-establishment in 2006, has placed priority on programmes and strategies that promote the development of young leaders and encourage corporate social responsibility.
