Tamale NGO assists 60 school girls with bicycles

Tamale, Feb. 18, GNA - The Regional Advisory Information and Network Systems (RAINS), a Tamale-based NGO has assisted some 60 school girls in deprived communities with bicycles.

The beneficiaries, who walk long distances to school were drawn from the Yendi, Central Gonja and the Bunkpurugu/Yunyoo districts, where some 300 other girls would be supported with school uniforms, shoes and books to enable them go through their education.

The assistance was an extension of RAINS' education project programme, which addresses the constraints of girls' education through a direct material and financial support. Other interventions include community mobilization, strengthening school level structures, enhancing participation of communities in educational management and galvanizing local and national support for girls' education. The project is the continuation of a joint RAIN and the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), a US-based NGO collaboration that had already extended support to some 1,000 needy girls in three districts in the Northern Region.

Mr Nyadia Sulemana, Senior programmes Officer of RAINS, who presented the bicycles to the Deputy Northern Regional Director of Education, Hajia Agnes Ali, said RAINS was working closely with Girls' Education unit of the Ghana Education Service to enhance their supervisory roles.

He said the programme had also recognized preventive health in reducing HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in children's formative years.

He said RAINS would continue to offer the necessary support to boost education, particularly girls, in the region. Hajia Ali, Deputy Northern Regional Director of Education, who received the bicycles on behalf of the girls, stressed the importance of women's role in nation building and called for more assistance to ensure that young girls had a good foundation in education. She commended President Evans Atta Mills for appointing women into key positions in his government and that the gesture would spur "other women on to work harder to climb the educational ladder".