CHILD WELFARE ORGANISATIONS DISCUSS STATE OF U.EAST KIDS (D/G Thursday July 3, 2008, PAGE 40)

A two-day stakeholders conference for staff of Afrikids Ghana, a charity organisation that works for the welfare of children, and representatives of Municipal and District Assemblies in the Upper East Region has been held at Bolgatanga with a call on civil society organisations and local government authorities to take interest in issues of child migration, child labour, trafficking and streetism in all the endemic communities of the region.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Alhassan Samari, who made the call, said this would complement the government's effort at ensuring that all forms of child abuse were brought to the barest minimum, if not eliminated.
The regional minister said this in a speech read on his behalf by his Deputy, Mrs Agnes Asangalisa Chigabatia, at the conference which had the theme: "Forging the efforts of stakeholders for optimum projects delivery".
The conference, the seventh in the series, was organised to source ideas as to how to improve a project known as "Operation Fresh Start," which is being implemented by the NGO aimed at relocating and resettling children from the streets in Kumasi and other big towns in the country and integrating them with their families and providing them with appropriate vocational skills to enable them to earn a living.
The project is currently being implemented in Bolgatanga, Bongo, Talensi-Nabdam and the Kassena-Nankana West districts.
While commending the NGO for liberating about 160 children from the streets in Kumasi and from the hazards of child labour, Mr Samari also praised them for introducing a micro-finance component that assists parents of targeted children to generate some income to support their children who are placed in various forms of vocational training.
He entreated Afrikids Ghana to take advantage of the Micro-Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) facilities established by the government as a source of micro-credit loan for beneficiaries.
Mr Samari also called on the NGO to consider replicating the project in the remaining five districts in the region to tackle the menace of child labour holistically.
The Project Manager, Mr Richard Amoah, said since the inception of the project in 2005, the 160 children, mostly from the Race Course area in the Kumasi metropolis in the Ashanti Region, had been successfully resettled with their families in the Upper East Region and were undergoing various vocational training courses, while some had been enrolled in formal education.
He said the time had come for local government authorities to come on board to support the project and be part of the success story.
The Country Director of Afrikids Ghana disclosed that after several years of relying on donors from outside for support, his organisation would soon wean itself off foreign donors and raise funds internally.
He said following the success of the NGO, Afrikids was being mentioned for several awards for its efforts at reducing child labour in the country.