250 girls in Nabdam District enrolled into informal education

Link Community Development, a non-profit organisation, has enrolled about 250 out-of-school girls in the Nabdam District of the Upper East Region into informal education.

The initiative, which seeks to empower the young girls aged 15 to 19, is part of the four-year project dubbed, “Strategic Approaches to Girls-Child Education (STAGE)”, and has funding support from the Department for International Development (DFID), a United Kingdom development agency, through the World Education.

The underprivileged girls would go through six to seven months’ tuition in literacy and numeracy as well as vocational training to empower them economically to live dignified lives.

Link Community Development, now Link Ghana, was established in 1999 with the vision of offering opportunities to marginalised children to use education as a weapon to help fight poverty.

Over the years Link Ghana has worked and supported various stakeholders in education to promote inclusive education, especially among rural communities.

The Project Coordinator for Link Community Development, Mr Joachim Faara, speaking at Zanlerigu, one of the training communities, indicated that the informal aspect of the STAGE project was implemented in only Nabdam District and about 10 communities were benefitting.

Mr Faara explained that 25 vulnerable girls in each community were benefitting from the project, and added that apart from the literacy and numeracy training, the girls would be empowered to learnt trades, including, bakery, dressmaking, weaving, tie and dye designing, hairdressing, among other vocational skills.

The Project Coordinator disclosed that after the training the girls would be supported to start their own businesses, whilst those who want to further their education at the formal vocational schools would also be supported in that regard.

The initiative, he explained, sought to offer some form of competencies and income-generating skills to enable the girls fend for themselves and safe from extreme poverty.

According to Mr Faara, apart from the informal track being implemented in Nabdam District, another component of the STAGE project, the formal track, was also being implemented in the Bongo, Nabdam, Kassena-Nankana West and Bawku West districts.

The Assemblyman-elect for the Zanlerigu-Daaliga Electoral Area, Mr Maxwell Divom, applauded the initiative of Link Community Development for empowering the young girls, and said it would go a long way to relieve them of extreme economic hardships.

He said most of the girls got married at the expense of their education due to poverty and other related factors, and expressed the hope that the beneficiaries would take the training seriously and reap maximum benefits.

The beneficiaries expressed gratitude to the charitable organisation, and said the training would afford them another opportunity to be educated with basics of numeracy and literacy and learn vocational skills as well.

One of the beneficiaries, Ms Beatrice Kihimbo, who is learning bakery skills, said as a result of poverty, she got married; therefore, the project would enable her to gain employable skills to work and generate income to take care of her family.

She said it would also enable her to get the needed resources to take care of her wards’ educational and health needs and other basic social needs.