CAMFED Ghana, an organisation that supports girls in education, has stressed its determination to reach five million girls in the next five years with various forms of educational support to help curb school-based violence among children.
The agenda is to equip the girls with the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes for the provision of professional career guidance, mentorship and related services for in-school youth and various actors in education to control violence among children in shcools.
Mr. Martin-Rex Mousayir Kuunyem, the Programmes Officer at the CAMFED Ghana, made these known at the opening of a two day capacity building workshop for the Regional and School-based Guidance and Counseling (G&C) Coordinators from the Bono and Western Regions, at Ejisu-Abankro, in Ashanti.
Guidance and Counselling unit is a support service that is aimed at helping individuals discover and develop their educational, vocational and psychological potentials and thereby achieve an optimal level of personal happiness and social usefulness.
The training, supported by CAMFED Ghana, covered topics including preparing the Ghanaian student for the world of work, mentoring, behaviour modification, education in emergency, and positive discipline tools.
Others were strategies for keeping the schools safe, psychosocial support during emergencies and building the psychosocial wellbeing of school personnel.
The Programmes Officer,therefore, encouraged the coordinators to intensify their education in their various schools to help curb school-based violence among children.
Mrs. Gifty Sekyi-Bremansu, National Director of G&C unit at the Ghana Education Service, expressed worry about the increasing number of violence among school children, and called on the coordinators to intensify education in their various schools.
“Recently, there have been issues concerning school-based violence such as sexual harassment, abuse, corporal punishment, and related issues, which is worrying, so I will appeal to you to carry on your task effectively to help curb the situation,” she noted.
Mrs. Sekyi-Bremansu, observed that such workshops were appropriate to resource the coordinators with the needed skills and attitudes for them to perform their duties effectively and efficiently as expected.
“This training is appropriate for the coordinators because if they go back to their various schools and implement what they learnt here, the outcomes would be very encouraging.
“I want to appeal to you to take this training seriously, absorb everything because much would be expected from you.” She appealed to them, and expressed gratitude to CAMFED Ghana for supporting the workshop.
FROM KINGSLEY E.HOPE,KUMASI
