Child Protection Ghana Project #30448

Providing School Supplies to 100 Children in Ghana

by Action against Child Exploitation (ACE)

Providing School Supplies to 100 Children in Ghana

Project Report | Sep 6, 2019
Reflecting on the Measurable Impact of Our Project

By Alice Harada | ACE Intern

Thank you for your ongoing support of our projects. Without your financial contributions, we would not be able to continue our operations in new villages in Ghana and establish child labour-free supply chains in Ghana and across the globe.

Last week ACE presented at the TICAD 7 (7th Tokyo International Conference on African Development), an international three-day gathering attended by country leaders, NGOS, trade unions and government ministries. The TICAD is an important collection of events fostering cross-sector collaboration and knowledge exchange and it acts as a time for reflection on the progress being made in African development. It is also a time when future priorities and commitments by all stakeholders can be declared. It represented a great opportunity for ACE to reflect upon the lessons learned from the SMILE Ghana project and how our operations are leading the way for the creation of a system of Child Labour Free Zones (CLFZ) across cocoa-farming communities in Ghana.

On the second day of the conference, we were able to have a lengthy conversation with Nana Brempong, head of our local partner CRADA, as well as Mr. Nana, Chief of a village in Atwima Mponua district where we first started the SMILE Ghana project back in 2009. We reflected upon how the community had changed within the last ten years, and thought it was important to share some of their jaw-dropping statistics with you.

Prior to the project, 30% of the village’s children were enrolled in school. Attendance was poor and a path toward university practically non-existent. The existing educational environment itself discouraged attendance and helped steer children into labour in the coca-industry: the village didn’t have a junior high school - the nearest one was 9 miles away, teacher attendance and performance was poor due to lack of training and infrastructure, and parents could not see the importance of sending children to school when they lacked the funding to provide them with necessary supplies such as textbooks and school meals. Today, enrolment in school is at 95% with school attendance remaining between 95-98% throughout the year. Several students are attending university this year.

Chief Nana himself expressed his surprise and gratitude regarding how much the village had changed, highlighting the fact that he no longer saw children working on the farm during the school day. As part of the SMILE project, a junior high school was built in the village. School supplies provided. Vulnerable families provided financial support and financial management training. Teachers given training and more teachers recruited to accommodate the increase in the pupil population.

While he acknowledged that he had faced some reluctance at the beginning of the project to withdraw children from labour, the improvements of the educational environment and awareness-raising activities regarding the importance of education has reinforced support amongst community members. We were so delighted to hear about how things had changed in this village and these changes are being seen in the other project villages too. By providing these communities with the initial aid to improve - or even newly establish - basic facilities and supplies, we are able to kick start a long-term transformation of development.

We will continue to work with local people in Ghana, working in solidarity to create a better educational environment for all the children who live there so that they have the capacity to themselves build a better future for their community.

Thank you again for your role in these successes. Any further support that you can give for the continuation and expansion of this project will be much appreciated.

Presentation at TICAD 7 Side Event

With chocolates made from beans from Ghana

Children in school at a village in Ghana

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Jun 10, 2019
Villages Taking Independent Action

By Akira Kondo | Ghana Project Manager

School Committee and PTA having a meeting

My name is Akira Kondo, and I am the Ghana Project Manager for ACE. Thank you so very much for supporting our efforts to end child exploitation in the world.

ACE has been implementing the "Smile Ghana Project" to eliminate child labour in Brong-Ahafo, Asunafo-South District since February 2018. In these two villages, the villagers themselves have been trying hard to improve the educational environment for their children. However, there are still many challenges ahead of them.

One of the biggest challenges in the current situation is how to provide school lunches to children. It was originally planned to receive a subsidy from the local government to cover the cost, but the subsidy has not been provided since October 2018, and the schools haven’t been able to secure other sources of funding, and so have not been able to provide lunches to children for a while.

Because school lunch hasn't been provided, and most parents cannot afford to prepare meals for their children to bring to school, some children go hungry at lunchtime and this undermines their health, well-being, and education. Not being able to concentrate on their studies, some of them stopped coming to school. We discussed how to solve this issue and what measures may be taken with the school operation committee and the PTA to raise money from parents and villagers, but so far, current efforts have not proven effective in raising or allocating the necessary funds.

So representatives of the Village Council, the School Committee, and the Community Child Protection Committee (CCPC) decided to go directly to the county office and petition the county governor to provide a subsidy. The governor, who heard the plight, immediately contacted the Education Bureau staff and instructed them to take measures. It is going to take a little while to get the subsidy, but it is on its way.

In the past, people in the villages were not so eager to take their own actions in such matters. However, they have now learned the importance of education and children's rights through our project, and have started to take initiative by themselves, which led to their taking the step of going to the county governor directly. We are so proud of the people in the villages, and their growing sense of empowerment and self-determination to improve the lives of children!

We will continue to work with people of the village in solidarity, to provide a better educational environment for all the children who live there.

Thank you so much for your continued support! Any further support that you can give for the furtherance of this project will be much appreciated.

Meeting with the county governor

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Mar 11, 2019
Celebrating our 10 year anniversary

By Tomoko Shiroki | Managing Director and Co-founder

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