Soul Clinic climaxes 50th Anniversary celebration

The Soul Clinic International School have crowned the end of the academic year with an event to mark the pinnacle of their Golden Jubilee celebrations.

The school held a programme to showcase the creativity of students with art exhibitions, music performances, choreography, drama, ballet, fashion show and the cutting of cake on Saturday, 8 December 2018.

Students who excelled in various fields were acknowledged and hardworking members of staff were presented with awards.

Established in 1968 by the late Rev. Vincent McCauley, a missionary from Guyana, South America, the school boasts of world-class facilities including state-of-the-art science and computer labs, a fully stocked library, modern and well-furnished classrooms, and sports facilities that provide a conducive environment for teaching and learning.

In a speech, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Lieutenant General Obed Boamah Akwa, who was the Special Guest of Honour at the event, praised staff of the school who have kept the vision of the founder by making Soul Clinic “one of the best and most sought-after institutions in the country”, which provides education based on the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) curricula.

He was grateful that the school maintains “a high level of academic content based on Godly values to provide holistic training that prepares students academically, physically, spiritually, morally and socially to become self-sufficient”.

Lieutenant General Akwa, whose children attended Soul Clinic, was hopeful that “within the next 50 years, we may have a Nobel Prize-winning scientist coming out of this school”.

Ms Caroline Carpino, a Ghana-based American nurse, and teacher of children with special needs, who served as the Chairperson of the event, lauded the congenial atmosphere prevailing at Soul Clinic, which, she said makes it easier for children of different races and cultural backgrounds to settle in with ease and learn from each other.

In an interview with the media, the Assistant Director of Soul Clinic, Ms Marcia McCauley said her father “felt called by God to found a school to educate young children and raise them up to be great future leaders”.

Even though her father passed away on 28 March 1997, she said the vision of her father “still lives on” and the products of Soul Clinic are a testament of the good work of the current staff.

She said Soul Clinic strives “to do what is right and inculcate in the children everything that is wholesome for them to be able to live a positive mark for the rest of their lives”.

She was grateful for three awards won by the school in the recent past, for their brilliant tuition in the Cambridge IGCSE curriculum and excellent results attained by their students.

The school offers full scholarships to orphans across the country. An average of seven needy students from different orphanages are enrolled each year and given free tuition from kindergarten till graduation.

“Our work here is a service and a mission and we do a lot of work with children who have no family and we have received a lot of thanks through that,” the Assistant Director added.

She pointed out that “through this wonderful gift [of scholarships] that the Director has been giving, one of our students have graduated successfully and offering a law programme in Birmingham University and that is Comfort Sena Attah. She started from kindergarten and completed with us and was able to further her studies in the UK”.

Ms McCaulley, who is concerned about educational policies in the country, also advocates interventions that will focus on skills development and practical work to adequately prepare children to adapt to any environment to creatively provide solutions to every real-life challenge.

She wants the government and policymakers to provide support to educational institutions to help children acquire the right exposure to shape the training and development of every child.

She was of the opinion that “there are so many things changing in the world and I feel that we need to equip the children with something that they can use, which are skills and practical work”, adding that: “The earlier they are exposed to these things, the better our children will be”.

“There are so many things that the country needs and the children must be given the skills and practical work to be able to achieve these things,” she emphasised.

To her, “Ghana is a blessed country and we need to take very good care of it” to make it a better place for young ones to thrive.

Other prominent personalities who attended the event are Francis Albert Seth Nyonyo, a member of the Council of State and Nii Kwade Okropong l, La Abese Mantse.