'Continue studying while at home' - Ghanaian children urged

Ghanaian children have been advised to take advantage of the various electronic learning platforms to study while they continue to stay at home amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Ms Lydia Owusua Agyarkwa, Project Officer at Defence for Children International Ghana (DCI), a Kumasi-based NGO focusing on the welfare of children, said this would not only sharpen their brains and knowledge but would also keep them abreast of issues around them.

In an interaction with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the occasion of the National Children’s Day celebrations in Kumasi, she said staying idle in the house for a longer period would not help matters when schools reopened.

This year’s celebration is themed “five years of implementing the Child and Family Welfare Policy; the Achievement, challenges and the way forward.”

The National Children’s Day celebration, which falls on August 31, every year, she said, is used to evaluate how government and civil society organizations have been working together to address issues affecting children and their development.

It is also used to identify gaps within the implementation strategies and further find solutions to address them.

Ms. Agyarkwa indicated that the DCI-Ghana recognized the role of the government and partners in child rights promotion and protection and urged all to do everything to protect, safeguard and prevent all forms of social violence against children.

She said children in Ghana continued to experience physical, emotional, and verbal forms of abuse.

Research, according to her, indicated that 57 per cent of children between ages 10 and 17, were beaten at home while 34 per cent of the same ages were beaten by teachers in schools.

In 2015, the estimated total number of children who had been physically or emotionally abused was noted to be 3.4 million in Ghana.

Ms. Agyarkwa was of the strong belief that such abuses could be prevented by engaging stakeholders to undertake a campaign to educate parents, teachers, guardians, and children alike about alternative methods of discipline that helped children learn to develop healthy emotional lives.

She said coping mechanisms could be used to handle children and their frustrations to grow resilient in the face of obstacles, and also practice self-discipline, such that they behaved in socially acceptable ways.