Foundation commences project for Antweem Kumase
Connecting Kids Edu Foundation has commenced its flagship project for 2017 at Antweem Kumase in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Municipality in the Central Region to nurture every child to achieve his/her full potential and also to help and remotivate teachers to achieve their best.
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A statement from the foundation, a not-for-profit educational charity-promoting organisation, which is working with the motto: “Building capacity and improving on what already exists,” indicated that the training workshops arranged by the organisation last week were the starting point of that journey.
The foundation decided to expand the programme to another community, Antweem Kumase in the municipality, leading to the organisation of a four-day workshop in the community last week to build the capacity of the students and nurture them to perform excellently in their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), using child-centred approaches to help them get better Senior High Schools (SHSs) or enrol in apprenticeship.
Four project sites
According to the statement, the organisation, started over five years ago, is now supporting over 2,600 students across four project sites in Ghana’s Central and Eastern regions, adding that “our model is based on working within communities, with religious and political leaders, educational authorities, teachers and parents to provide infrastructure and resources to help communities help themselves”.
The aim of the organisation is to improve literacy for children in rural communities who need support to be able to help themselves, and also to provide practical and sustainable educational support by identifying schools and communities which might be struggling but have the ambition and the potential to significantly improve.
It said the organisation supports literacy programmes and also provides infrastructural facilities in rural communities, pointing out that it had so far built a library and an information and communications technology (ICT) centre for Anum Anglican Primary School, leading to improvement in reading among the pupils, and also built a four-classroom block for the St Peters Methodist Primary at Besease in the KEEA Municipality, where they have been working with Besease M/A Basic School.
In an interview, the Director of the programme, Mrs Ellen Blamires, said improving resources was not the end of the story, pointing out that the overarching objective for all projects was to improve examination results across the board and then to sponsor the best performing students as they continued their education.
Partnership model
She said the foundation has proved that the partnership model it has developed is workable, as the examination results in all its partner schools have improved year on year, stressing, “Unless those resources lead to long-lasting change and allow children to grow and fulfil their ambition, we will have failed.”
She said since 2012, the foundation had been working with the Besease M/A Basic School to improve results at the BECE and as a result, the school was the best performing school at the 2014/15 BECE in relation to the performance of all government schools in the KEEA and the second best, including private schools in the municipality.
Assessing the programme, the Circuit Supervisor for Kissi and the KEEA Coordinator for the programme, Mr Gibson Ofori-Owusu, urged parents to support the initiative.
