World Vision improves lives in Bongo

Bongo (U/E) July 11, GNA - World Vision (WV) Ghana has made a good impact on the lives of people in the Bongo District as well as the development of the area.

For the past 15 years, it has worked with children to improve their health, promote education and support their welfare and with the adult population it helped in agriculture and small scale businesses, Ms Benedicta Pealore, Area Development Programme (ADP) Manager, has said.

She said this when WVI organized a tour for the media to see its development areas and interact with those who had benefited from their support.

Ms Pealore said the Bongo ADP worked in collaboration with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Ghana Education Service (GES), Ghana Health Service (GHS), Ghana Rural Water Project (GRWP) and Government of Germany. In the area of Education, she said, ADP worked with the GES to support children especially the girl child to climb the educational ladder. She mentioned Miss Adiza who had been supported training to be a medical doctor, Monica Atule, a graduate nutritionist, Miss Mary Asanyuure, doing teaching practice at Yorogo Junior High School near Bolgatanga and several others who are becoming teachers and nurses. She said WV had also developed the community economically, the ADP collaborated with MoFA and Association of Progressive Entrepreneurs in Development (APED) to support farmers and Micro Enterprise Development (MED) groups. Several men and women had been empowered economically and socially with over 160 being trained in vocational skills.

Ms Pealore said Bongo Soe Women's group could boast of an international market for their shea-butter, the Nyariga Women and men handicraft groups could be sure of producing quality products and ready market for their goods, children and farmers are empowered to rear guinea fowls and small ruminants. The ADP had also piloted three drip irrigation dams in three communities to help farmers with dry season farming. Ms Pealore said the major impact was the drastic reduction in youth migration and increased family incomes. She recalled that when the flood disaster hit the Bongo District in 2007, WV Germany in collaboration with Government of Ghana provided non-food items, seed and farm inputs and built rooms for 800 households in the district. They also provided supplementary feeding for 13,000 school children. The ADP in conjunction with NADMO has also empowered 12 communities to develop Community Disaster Preparedness Plans (CDPP), tools that serve as referral points to prevent and effectively manage disasters in case they occur. World vision also established the Local Council Churches, GOOD News Clubs and Good News Club Teachers who are promoting spiritual life of children.

Mr Agana Azani, a guinea fowl farmer, told the Ghana News that World Vision had helped them and could pay their children's school fees, buy clothes for the family and feed the family. He expressed regret that world Vision was ending the programme and said it was a big blow to them and wished it could stay on for the next 20 years.

A 16-year-old boy benefiting from a small ruminate programme said he was taking care of 10 goats and one sheep. He sells the goat to pay his school fees, buy school uniforms, books and food for the family. Mary Asaah said she did dry season farming and that as WV was phasing out they were planning to expand the irrigation so that they would be able to sustain it.