Problems of street children to be tackled scientifically - Bannerman

Mrs Cecelia Bannerman, Minister of Manpower, Development and Employment, on Friday said the government was prepared to tackle the street children phenomenon through scientific methods.

She said it was in that direction that a loan had been contracted from the World Bank to be disbursed to key non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other government agencies engaged in the street children's project.

Mrs Bannerman, in a speech read for her at a day's workshop organised by the Youth Development Foundation (YDF) an NGO, in Accra on the dissemination of evaluation lessons on Sexual Health Project for street children said the loan would assist in expanding the interventions of NGOs and other government organisations to design better packages that would re-integrate children on the streets into mainstream of society.

"The government is looking forward to NGOs and other organisations to design programmes that would assist children in the streets, willing to accept voluntary repatriation or re-integration to their roots," she said. Mrs Bannerman urged them to come out with proposals that would help facilitate re-integration and also design programmes that would focus on the preventive aspects of "streetism".

She commended the YDF for the evaluation project and urged it to keep up the practice of evaluating programmes since modern trends of development required informed programmes with scientific database. The Minister, however, noted that it was unfortunate that many organisations and NGOs were not practising the monitoring and evaluation of programmes, which often led to poor execution of programmes.

Mr Nelson Agyeman, Chief Executive of YDF, said it was working to promote youth development and poverty alleviation and in opening up economic opportunities for the youth between the ages of 10 and 24 years in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo and Cameroon. He said the initiative started about 15 years ago in Ghana, where the evaluated projects proved successful and was replicated in the other countries.

The Chief Executive said the YDF and the Population Concern, another NGO, implemented the Sexual Health Project for street children at Kaneshie in Accra between October 1999 and March 2002. According to him the project was aimed at educating and counselling the youth on sexual health as well as providing contraceptives and clinical services. Mr Nelson said the project achieved positive results in the short-term of one year and was for this reason that the evaluation project was being launched.

He said the next project phase would be redesigned and to incorporate an employment component that would possibly keep the youth off the streets and reduce their vulnerability to AIDS.

Mr Nelson urged donors to include evaluation and audit plans in their serious engagement with partners ahead of time. "We can also assess and audit organisations we plan to engage to determine their worthiness long before we accept proposals and approve funds. "Mrs Wumi Onadipe, Programme Manager of Population Concern, commended the YDF for their efforts and urged them to work hard to meet the needs of street children.