Community Child Protection Units for Tumu

Arku Jasmine Jul - 08 - 2013 , 08:01

Thirty Community Child Protection Units (CCPU) have been launched at Tumu in the Sissala East District to liaise and work in close collaboration with chiefs, the district assemblies and other stakeholders, to protect the rights of children. The initiative, which is being spearheaded by the Peoples Action to Win Life All Round (PAWLA), a non-governmental organisation, with support from Plan Ghana, has an ultimate goal of ensuring a violent-free school environment for children.

It is also to protect the rights of children and to empower children to know their rights and to demand what is due them.

To this end, the PAWLA has built boxes known as, "Child speaks out boxes" which would be placed in various schools and recreational centres for children to put their views on paper and deposit them in the boxes.

This, according to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the PAWLA, Mr Alasidongor Baluri,would be collected periodically and put together in the form of reports and made available to policy makers and to push further the needs and interests of children.

He stressed the significance of children and their roles in every civilised society and said the greatest resource every society could boast of was its children.

The Upper West Regional Programme Unit Manager of Plan Ghana, Mr Richard Boadu, who was the guest speaker at the ceremony, said access to education was a fundamental right for all children but the continued sexual exploitation and abuse in and around educational institutions has posed a challenge to promoting children’s rights.

"It is time to break the silence on school-based and community based sexual exploitation and abuse of children" he stressed, and said violence in any form, be it corporal punishment, bullying or sexual assault has damaging consequences for both children and the entire society.

Mr Boadu mentioned a number of interventions including the formation of Rights of Children (RoC) clubs and the Learning Without Fear campaigns introduced by Plan Ghana in its quest to protect the rights of children and to curb the abuse of children, and said the formation of the CCPU would further enhance efforts at pushing issues affecting children on the national agenda.