Teachers, students train as peer educators to help address sexual violence in schools
Some teachers and students from selected schools in the Ada East and the Ledzokuku Krowor municipalities in the Greater Accra Region have received a five-day intensive training on peer education.
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The general objective of the training was to empower the participants, a total of 100 students and 20 teachers from the selected schools, to become peer educators. Under the supervision of teachers, they will perform such roles in the communities in the two districts.
Topics
Topics for the training included Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Gender Violence, Human Rights, Child Rights Laws and sexual violence.
As part of their role, they will provide information on how to report cases of sexual violence in their respective schools and organise educational and sensitisation activities to create awareness in their schools and communities to help deal with sexual violence against girls in schools.
The training is an initiative by the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre (GSHDC), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), in the country, in partnership with VotoMoile and funded by Amplify Change, which is part of a general project, Sexual Violence Against Girls in School (SVAGS), currently under implementation.
The project forms part of the organisation’s two-year project titled: “Cell Phones Against Sexual Violence: Using Mobile Technology to promote safer schools.”
The organisation is committed to the protection and promotion of women and children’s rights in Ghana.
Project
In a presentation at the programme, the leader of the GSHDC, Mrs Dorcas Coker-Appiah, said the general objective of the project was to empower girls in the country.
“One of the more immediate problems in addressing SVAGS is that the scope and causes of this issue are being poorly understood,” she said, adding that “with the implementation of the project, the rights of girls would be protected.”
Mrs Coker-Appiah indicated that the project would also go a long way to address issues of sexual, economic, emotional and psychological violence, which would make girls responsible for reporting perpetrators.