NCCE embarks on child marriage sensitisation project in Agona East
Participant in a focus group discussion have advised parents to stop demanding financial and material support from their young daughters since such demands often pushed such children to engage in promiscuous lifestyles.
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According to them, such acts from parents most often forced the girls to go after men for financial favours which lead them into teenage pregnancies that negatively impact on their development.
The participants noted that the unnecessary financial and material demands from parents had resulted in unwanted pregnancies which compelled most of such children into child marriages.
Two-year project
The programme, which forms part of a two-year project being sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), was interspersed with drama by students of the Nsaba Presbyterian Senior High School (NSASS) on child marriage.
The project is being undertaken in six regions across the country. in the Central Region it is being implemented in the Agona East and Awutu Senya districts.
Objectives
The project is to promote the inclusion of child protection issues, including child marriage, in the programmes of districts or municipal assemblies through the engagement of district level protection services and institutions.
It also seeks to identify and strengthen existing community mechanisms to prevent and respond to issues of child marriage and other forms of child abuses.
Making a presentation on behalf of the groups, a participant, Mr Emmanuel Esandoh, called on parents to make positive efforts to provide the needs of their children to prevent them from making demands from men who would support them but end up abusing them sexually.
He stated that it was totally unacceptable for parents to push their underage girls into marriage and urged parents to offer the needed guidance and counselling to their children so that they would make the right choices and decisions that would be of benefit to them in future.
He advocated the creation of a conducive environment at home to promote cordial relationships between parents and their children so that they could easily and freely share their problems with them, noting that such a move would enable parents to address some of the pressing needs of their children.
Sensitising parents
The Agona East District Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Mr Joshua-Luther Ndoye Upoalkpajor, said the two-year project was expected to sensitise parents in the beneficiary communities to prevent and protect their children from child marriage.
He also urged parents to ensure that their female children would dress decently and modestly to protect them from sexual abuse.
The Omankrado of the town, Nana Obiriboa Krampa III, who chaired the event, thanked the NCCE for the education and called on parents to enrol their children in school and also collaborate with stakeholders to prevent child marriage in the district.
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