NGO launches street children project

Tamale, July 12, GNA - A Tamale-based NGO, "Tiyumtaba" (Unity) Integrated Development Association (TIDA) on Saturday launched a new initiative in the municipality aimed at improving public perception of street children with the view to finding a solution to the phenomenon. The initiative is an advocacy component under the comprehensive "Tamale Street Children Project", which is supported and funded by the Tamale Municipal Assembly and the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment.

Speaking at the launch, Mr Alhassan Seidu, Executive Director of TIDA, said his organization, recognizing street children as defenceless as any other identifiable vulnerable social group, and the phenomenon as another manifestation of poverty in the society, had initiated the project to combat the menace.

He said the project was also aimed at improving, among other things, the capacity, knowledge and skills of traditional structures, families and households to significantly reduce the incidence of child streetism. The initiative, he said, sought to enhance behaviour, practice and attitude of families, households, guardians and society in general to accept full responsibility for the survival, protection and development of children.

It also seeks to reduce vulnerability of children, especially street children to social problems such as HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy and crime.

Mr Seidu said the project, with a one-year duration elapsing by the end of December this year, or in the first quarter of 2004, was being implemented in 15 communities within the municipality, usually referred to as "Tamale Rural."

He said among the activities involved in the project would be a baseline assessment and research to establish the profile of the issues in the beneficiary communities and an advocacy for targeting all social groups and individuals in the selected communities.

There would also be a house-to-house advocacy and counselling support service targeting specific cases and households.

In an address read for him to launch the project, Mr Iddrisu Adam, Tamale Municipal Chief Executive noted that the inauguration was taking place at a time when there was an empirical evidence of the government's commitment at creating employment for the youth.

He said: "As I speak now, about 330 girls and boys in the municipality are receiving one form of employment skills training or the other under the community-based poverty reduction programme of the street children component of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy."

Mr Adam said the street children phenomenon had been identified as one of the indicators of poverty, adding that there were other social reasons for which children were found on the streets.

He mentioned some of these as poor parent-child relationship; poor parenting leading to teenage pregnancies; irresponsible adulthood, manifesting itself in denial or refusal to accept responsibility for pregnancies and increasing abuse of drugs.

He noted that children were the manpower reserve of every nation but wondered whether children who had had no access to education, good health, moral discipline and the comfort of the home could become the country's future leaders.

The Municipal Chief Executive explained that the project was intended to test interventions and strategies to ascertain the most effective and efficient means of addressing the street children phenomenon. He said the lessons learnt and the best practices that would be documented during the project period would then be expanded to help reduce the incidence of street children nation-wide. The Street Children Project is on the theme: "Empowering local citizens to fight against streetism in the Tamale Municipality."