Accra,- Over 90 vulnerable children in Oyibi and Saasabi Communities in Kpone-Katamanso Municipality, have enrolled unto the free weekend classes being organised by the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Connexions Ghana to enhance students’ academic performance.
OVC’s mission is to leverage the collective resources of local and global partners to ensure orphans, vulnerable children and their caregivers acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and experiences to survive, thrive and excel.
Under its ‘Read and Feed’ programme, OVC Connexions Ghana offers vulnerable children between the ages of six and 17, the opportunity to learn to boost their academic performance, every Saturday.
The programme, which registers children from class one to Junior High School (JHS) offers free lunch.
It also includes a life skills session, where children learn about time management, planning skills, communication skills, confidence building, and teamwork.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview during one of the sessions at Oyibi near Accra, Mr Eric Kwabena Amano-Mpianim, the Country Coordinator of OVC Connexions Ghana, highlighted the need to move orphans and vulnerable children from orphanages into foster care and actual homes.
He said as part of their mandate, OVC identified vulnerable children at the community level, and worked with their families to support them to be in school and to access healthcare and other services that were due children.
Mr Amano-Mpianim told GNA that the focus for ‘Read and Feed’ was to boost academic performance, saying “some of them didn’t start school early because their parents could not afford and their assessment also revealed that there were children who had not gone to school but passed the school age and were home.
He said there were more vulnerable children in society “in fact when we did our assessment in August 2020, we had over 235 children in this category, but our funds cannot reach all of them, so we have been able to organize this for 100 of them, every Saturday”.
Mr Amano-Mpianim called on organisations to support charity groups like OVC, to reach out to vulnerable children in communities across the country.
Bishop David Kwadwo Ofosuhene, Board Chairman of OVC Connexions Ghana, noted that orphan care in Ghana and the world should not basically be the responsibility of governments, saying “it should be the responsibility of the people, churches and the families”.
He told GNA that the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) was focusing on education, general health care and building up children to become assets than liabilities in society, and therefore called on churches, and benevolent and corporate organisations to invest in child care.
“We believe, what we are doing through our educational programmes will encourage children to learn harder and to achieve better results as we invest into their lives”.
Bishop Ofosuhene underscored the need to find families, educate them through the Department of Social Welfare; “and let them take responsibility of taking care of their families; their children should not be sent to orphanages but to be kept by the families, to have that sense of belonging”.
Source: Ghana News Agency
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