WFP, GES SUPPORT 33 GIRLS — With SHS education (page 17)

THE World Food Programme, in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES) has supported 33 girls in the three northern regions with their senior high school (SHS) education.
The gesture was made possible through a scholarship and awards scheme instituted by the two organisations with support from other partners in 2001.
Fifteen of the girls were granted scholarships, under which they each received a cheque for GH¢400, a quantity of books, certificate and hamper. The remaining 18 girls were each given hampers, a quantity of books and certificates.
Speaking at a ceremony at Dungu, a suburb of Tamale, to present the items to the beneficiaries. The Project Co-ordinator, Mrs Veronica Jackson, said the scheme was part of efforts by stakeholders to encourage girls to take their studies seriously.
According to her, the beneficiaries had aggregates between 6 and 15 in the 2008 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), which qualified them to enjoy the facility.
Mrs Jackson, therefore, commended teachers and staff of the GES for their immense contribution to the high academic performance among the beneficiaries.
The Head of the Tamale office of the WFP, Mr Thomas McKnight, observed that girls education was critical to lifting societies out of endemic hunger, poverty and violence.
“WFP believes that girls education and women’s empowerment are a sure way to achieving economic empowerment,” he pointed out.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Northern Regional Minister, Mr Stephen Nayina, noted that the region had numerous challenges in the education sector.
He bemoaned the poor academic performance of schools in the Tamale metropolis and charged directors of education to put in place effective mechanisms to ensure that children performed excellently at all levels of education.
The Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive, Alhaji Abdulai Haruna Friday, said many girls in the peri-urban communities needed to be encouraged to go to school.
He, therefore, entreated the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the secretariat of the School Feeding Programme to ensure that more primary schools in the metropolis benefited from the programme.