Naadu Mills Commends Role Of UNICEF

Accra (GAR), June 25, - Mrs Naadu Mills, wife of the Vice President, today commended the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) for its project in the Afram Plains which seeks to improve conditions of schools. Mrs Mills gave the commendation when she received a video cassette and a briefing on the project by a UNICEF team. The 45-minute documentary on the project called "Childscope Challenge" shows the poor state of schools and how four communities in the Afram Plains are being involved to improve them. The Project which was started in 1994 with funds from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), is a community-based participatory approach to help communities identify their own needs in the educational sector and contribute to the provision of such needs. The five-year project has so far received 984,000 dollars and will receive an annual donation of one million dollars during the period. Mrs Mills said the project is in line with the educational reforms and suggested that it should be extended to other communities, even in the Greater Accra Region. "While you are trying to help, you need not go far beyond this region where it has been identified that 30 children are able to read out of a class of 45," she said.