China offers support to keep girls in school

The Chinese Embassy has donated learning materials and cash amounting to GH? 20,000.00, to help support 100 brilliant but needy girls.

The beneficiaries are in the Birim North and Upper Manya Krobo Districts in the Eastern Region.

The package includes the payment of school fees, school bags, notebooks, mathematical sets and other learning materials, sanitary pads and two laptops for the two district education offices.

The support was in reaction to a Ghana News Agency story that more than 12,000 girls in the region dropped out of school in 2013, due to teenage pregnancies.

Following the report, the Regional Coordinating Council launched “the girl child education improvement project”, in collaboration with the Girl Child Education Unit of the Ghana Education Service to solicit for support for needy girls.

The beneficiary students are made up of 10 from senior high schools and 90 from the basic and junior high schools in the two districts.

Presenting the items, Ms Sun Baohong, Chinese Ambassador said, without a comprehensive development for women, there would never be a sustainable progress in the society.

She indicated that, to let girls have access to education, is one of the basics to fulfill their potentials in life, adding that, girl dropout leads to early marriage and early delivery, degradation of the overall population quality, crime against women and other social vices.

Ms Sun said, to seek solution to girl dropout requires a multi-faceted approach and large resources and called for the mobilisation of resources and urged stakeholders to contribute to help sustain girls in school.

Mr Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere, Regional Minister, urged the beneficiaries to let the support motivate them and help them to learn hard to attain success in their various fields of study.

He encouraged them not to let circumstances intimidate them but rather propel them to greater heights.