Questions

Response

What sector/s?

Education and Human Resource Development

Who are the beneficiaries

• Pupils especially girls in rural communities in the 3 Northern Regions of Ghana
• Rural communities in the 3 Northern Regions
• Teachers
• Ghana Education Service

What is the problem that the Fund helps to address?

Acute gender disparity in the retention, achievement and completion rates of girls in school. In most parts of northern Ghana, the one boy to one girl enrollment ratio at primary class one becomes 9 young men to 1 young woman at polytechnic or university level. This results in very low literacy rates for women in the three northern regions.

Factors responsible for this include:

• Many of our traditional policies and practices regard females inferior to males and therefore do not either send as many females to school as males or withdraw them from school after a few years to marry them off for the benefit of collecting a dowry for the survival of the rest of the family. These impede women’s access to formal education
• Lack of female teachers in rural schools particularly as role models and confidantes (predominantly male teaching staff in rural schools)
• Mirroring of traditional gender roles in schools
• Inadequate hygiene and sanitation facilities on school premises( particularly for the adolescent girls)
• Family poverty
• Movement of girls to southern towns/villages during holidays in search of menial jobs so as to provide school needs

What are the key project activities?

• Scholarships and financial support to brilliant but needy girls to stay in school especially beyond primary levels
• Build advocacy, assertiveness and participation skills for young girls
• Conduct holiday camps for girls
• Advocacy at the family, community district assembly (local council )level to improve support to girls and eliminate practices and policies that discriminate against women and girls
• Advocacy at the family, community and district assembly (local council )level to improve support for girl friendly school environment

• Build community interests and awareness on the social and economic advantages of girls education
• Ensure that communities have early childhood development centres to take care of younger siblings of girls in school
• Use of popular theatre to address fears and expectations regarding girls’ schooling and stimulate discussion on how to help girls become educated (IE&C activities)
• Support activities that result in the elimination of traditional policies that discriminate against girls and women

• Child-to-child survey to find out the reason why some girls are not in school and to hopefully get them enrolled and also bring dropouts back to school
• Survey to find out why pupils especially girls travel outside their districts to look for jobs during holidays
• Provide private and secure latrines and urinals

• Advocate to gain the support of traditional and religious leaders in promoting girls education
• Introduce support schemes (kind of scholarship) for girls from poor families
• Lobby the district assemblies to introduce/support programmes that will keep girls busy during the holidays while giving them some form of income to enable them provide their school needs

Who are our partners?

• Rural families and communities
• Beneficiary girls and women
• Parent Teacher Associations
• Ghana National Association of Teachers,
• Ghana Education Service (GES)
• District Assemblies (local councils)
• Northern Network for Educational Development (NNED)
• NGOs/other Agencies in education i.e. SNV, Catholic Diocesan Development Organization, Christian Mothers Association, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, etc
• Community Based Organizations
• Private sector organizations

Questions

Response

Who is the potential donor?

You-anytime you purchase our chocolates
You-when you encourage more of your friends, family and business associates to purchase our chocolates and donate to a worthy cause.