An advocacy network to support the Ghana Education Service (GES) to achieve its mandate, dubbed Ghana Education Network (GEN) has been set up to vigorously promote girl child education in the country.
The network of directors of the Girl Child Education Unit (GEU) sees girl child education issues as a human right issue and key to breaking the cycle of poverty among girls.
It is the target of the advocacy network to enable a systematic coordination and monitoring of all current and future girls’ education programme in Ghana in order to ensure that they align with the National Vision for Girls’ Education as well as the needs of the Ghanaian girls.
Speaking at a forum to set up an advisory body for GEN organized by Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) with funding from the Mastercard Foundation in Accra; Mrs. Catherine Mikado, director of Girls’ Education Unit (GEU) of the Ghana Education Service (GES) said issues with girls’ education in the country cannot be solely handled by the Government of Ghana (GoG).
‘’The issue of girls’ education is not for one person to handle because the unit needs a lot of support from the government and donor partners.
Quite often people do not understand the issue girls’ so it is misconstrued as pushing issues of the girl child above the male child’’ she maintained.
The needs of the girl child are equally important as the needs of the boy child in the country but the focus is on the girl child because they have peculiar needs that must be tackled like childhood pregnancy among other cultural practices in the country she narrated.
She added that issues of the girl child education have become a global issue leading to its inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN).
According to her, it is in view of this that the Girls’ Education Unit of the GES has to go looking for fund to boost girl child education activities in the country.
She said the motive of the advocacy network is to contribute towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) four and five as well as the actualization of the Gender in Education Policy (GES) in the country.
It is in view of this, ‘as a lead unit we decided to come together to form GEN to champion the course of the girl child education.
The main focus of the advocacy network is to get more and more girls in the classroom even though the numbers of girls keep rising by the day she said.
Inaugurating the Girls Education Network (GEN) advisory body; David Nkrumah Boateng, director of Impact at Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) was hopeful the board find ways to sustain the network in giving advice to the Ghana Education Service (GES) at the management level.
He urged members to make the network a functional one with much focus on promoting the girl child education in the country.
In all the following organizations made it to the advisory board: Ministry of Education (ME), Ghana Education Service (GES), Girls’ Education Unit (GEU), Development Partners, International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO), Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), Ministry of Health (MOH), Social Welfare Department and Campaign for Female Education (Camfed).
Source:Happyghana.com
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