The Accra Metropolitan Director of Education, Margaret Frimpong-Kore has urged parents in Ga communities to stop holding lavish naming ceremonies for their teenage daughters who give birth.

According to her, this trend encourages others to get themselves pregnant, resulting in the high rate of school dropouts in such communities.

“One of the challenges we have is the custom of the outdooring (the kpojiemo). We are not saying it’s a bad custom, it’s a very good one but when children drop out of school and then the kpojiemo is added to it because the child has gone to give birth, it sort of motivates others to go into it.”

She added that “if the elders of these communities will put in place some measures as a way of discouraging the girls from going into this and getting pregnant, it will help to reduce the rate at which the girls get pregnant”.

She also pleaded with parents to ensure their children get enough rest at night, so they can stay awake and concentrate when they get to school adding that “let us all in the community begin to be each other’s child keeper so that we begin to help the children”.

Speaking at the launch of the Rebecca Foundation’s ‘Because I want to be’ project, Mrs Frimpong-Kore encouraged teenage mothers to return to school for education, so they can be assured of a better future.

She stated that “if a child gives birth and wants to come back to school, we have educated the headteachers, the teachers and even the students have been sensitized to receive such a child back into school and we are welcoming them wholeheartedly because we want them to be educated”.

The ‘Because I want to be’ project is a collaboration between the first lady’s foundation and the UNFPA with the aim of getting school dropouts in coastal communities back to school.