The SOS Children’s Village in Tamale is making giant strides in improving child labor in the Northern Region following a community sensitization programme.
This is in line with the organization’s Family Strengthening Programme (FSP) that supports children in the communities who stand the risk of losing parental care.
The activity, which is an initiative of the FSP unit of the Village, constitutes one of FSP’s core components of engaging the local communities as a pre-emptive method to secure the future of these deprived children and prevent them from losing the care of their family.
The community programme featured children who performed a drama on child labor at Datoyili, a suburb of Tamale.
The focus was to educate, enlighten and sensitize the community members on the negative effects of their actions on the growth and future development of the child.
The programme was attended by traditional and opinion leaders, parents, care-givers, children and community-based organizations (CBOs) officials in Datoyili.
Speaking on the sidelines of the community engagement, Joseph Agoona, Tamale FSP coordinator, indicated that community engagement was a critical component of the FSP which seeks to support children in the communities at risk of losing parental care.
“The Datoyili community was specifically chosen for its peculiar nature of engaging children on their farms during the raining season instead of allowing them to attend school,” he said.
“This has contributed significantly to the recurrent low school attendance during this period and its consequent negative effect on the education of the children.”
He further indicated that the essence of the programme was to educate parents, caregivers and the community members on how their actions constituted child labor and the negative effects it has on the growth of their children.
He encouraged parents, care givers and the community members to take the education of their children seriously since it is their only passport to the future.
Parents and care-givers present were happy for the sensitization and promised to prioritize the education of their children instead of allowing them to work on their farms.
The Assemblyman of the Datoyili electoral area, Abu Haruna, was also full of praise for SOS Children’s Village Ghana for their continuous intervention and pledges the local assembly’s commitment to work with SOS to end the recurrent case of child labor in the community.
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