CCG holds career guidance and counselling for students of Northern Star SHS

Corporate Club Ghana (CCG), a social empowerment Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), has held career guidance and counselling session for students of the Northern Star Senior High School in Wa in the Upper West Region.

The session aimed at providing insights and guidance in career paths that could help the students to make informed choices regarding the lines of occupation to pursue as they go after their life and academic goals.

It was also to provide counselling to help the students smoothly navigate the rough and bumpy road of life as adolescents, a life stage that is filled with lots of challenges, in order to smoothly transition into responsible adulthood.

The Career Guidance and Counselling Session, held on June 16, 2023, had over thirty career professionals in attendance and a number of them sharing life experiences with the students.

Madam Salma Mohammed, a Clinical Psychologist and member of the CCG, identified stress as one of the conditions that often caused people to give up on their life's pursuits and ambitions, and she advised the students to beware of stress and how to manage it.

She intimated that stress was fleeting and usually induced by external factors which when identified and dealt with, goes into nonexistence.

"Stress is subjective. It depends on your interpretation of what you're looking at. So most of the time when it comes to stress, we try to work with people to look at what it is that you called stress and why is it stress to you.

"And stress is external. And how we can look for coping resources to actually help you overcome that stress, once that stressor is gone, it's no longer stress," she said.

She thus admonished the students to be good managers of their time as she noted that proper planning and time management was important to managing stress.

"Know yourself, know what you can handle, seek help when you have to, and join groups that are empowering.

"If you know yourself, you know where you want to go and how to get there. Speak to the right people so that they can sort of direct you to where you are supposed to go," Madam Salma added.

Madam Flora Eledi Deonuba, a House Mistress of the school, said the session was timely and appropriate to augment the efforts of teachers and management of the school in shaping the lives of the students.

She, however, lamented the rising incidences of adolescent pregnancies among student girls in the school.

"The rate at which our girls get pregnant is becoming alarming so much so they have to miss classes. Some we don't see them the remainder of Form One, Form Two and at the eleventh hour to WASSCE, they are there," she lamented.

Madam Flora attributed this phenomenon to the fact that the school is not a boarding institution and that there are no resident teachers on the campus to monitor the movement of the students.

"We come here to conduct a roll call and about 30 percent of the girls are home, you try to follow up at home and unfortunately they are not home," she added.

She appealed to the government and other education-focused organizations to come to the aid of the school with boarding facilities to enhance teaching and learning as well as the well-being of the students.

Master Douglas Sibiri, a student of the school who participated in the session, said it was very useful to him and that his life was impacted by the talks given by the speakers.

"I have learned a lot. When we have such programs as this one, I'll say this one was exceptional. That we should manage our time well as students, that we would not fear failure, a lot," he said.