The Berekum Municipal Education Directorate has hold a 3days educational campaign under the theme "Send Your Girl Child to School."
The campaign saw only girls participating in all the activities including clean up exercise within the Berekum municipality, campaign float through the principal streets of Berekum and climaxed it finally with girl child educational durbar campaign at the Berekum St. Monica’s school park.
The Municipal Girl Child Coordinator, Madam Augusta Amponsa made it clear to the girls that they should not respond the boys, since they would be a distraction to their educational dreams.
Madam Amponsah said, the idea of bringing the girls together through the girl child campaign, is to help educate them and bring them to the understanding of going through school and complete successfully, thus reducing the dropout rate. She emphasized that, the retention rate of the girls at school is reducing thereby holding this campaign to rekindle the girl child educational campaign to prevent teenage pregnancy is critical. She appealed to the authorities to support such kind of programs to rekindle girls’ activities in school especially in Berekum.
She said the program is the first of its kind in the Brong Ahafo Region and for that matter Ghana as a whole. She urged parents to take their girl child education seriously and not force them into early marriages and other activities, which does not bring anything better to their girl’s future.
Mr Kingsley Abrokwa, the Municipal Director of Education said he knows teachers are doing their best to help improve girl’s education. He further cautioned them especially the male teachers not engage in sexual activities with the girls, as the directorate will not hesitate penalizing any teacher found harassing sexually their students.
Mr Abrokwah said the Directorate is doing all they can to upgrade the educational standard and learning of school children within the Berekum municipality by introducing what he calls it early reading classes in various schools in Berekum to help the children in reading.
The MP for Berekum East Constituency, Hon. Dr. Kwabena Twum Nuamah praised the government for introducing the free SHS program. He encouraged parents to send their children to School to benefit from the Nana Akuffo Addo's free SHS program.
Dr. Twum Nuamah advised parents not to burden their girl child with house chores, which does not help them with their studies. He opined, parents to prevent their children from spending all their times on telenovelas, which goes a long way in distracting children from their books.
He urged parents to contribute a lot towards their girl’s education by monitoring their studies.
He promised to support the girl child educational unit in the Berekum Municipality.
