Street Girls Aid launches "stories from the streets"

Street Girls Aid, a child-focused Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) combating streetism, has launched a book titled “Stories from the Streets”, as part of activities marking its 20th Anniversary.

The book tells the stories of 20 individuals whom the NGO rescued from the grips of streetism.

The organisation said it had for the past 20 years been reaching women and girls, who lived on the streets and provided them with skills by training them in vocations such as catering, textile production, and dressmaking.

The organisation said it had also begun a mobile library service for street children to teach them how to read and write.

Ms Vida Asomaning Amoako, the Director of Street Girls Aid, said the NGO had impacted about 23,000 street children so far through various intervention programmes.

“The challenge is that the numbers keep increasing, even with Government agencies coming to help,” she said.

A research by the Department of Social Welfare and the University of Ghana’s Department of Sociology, recorded about 4,000 street children in Accra in 1992.

The number rose to 61,492 in 2011.