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Opinions of Tuesday, 29 November 2016

Columnist: Kwabena Danso

The Bike to School Program

Between 1989 and 1991, I lived in a cottage in the Western region of Ghana where I had to walk about 12 miles everyday to the nearest school in a village called Petepom near Bogoso.

It was one of the things that nearly made me stop schooling. It got to a point where I skip school to go hunting even though my guardians thought I was in school.

When I moved back to Yonso in the later part of 1991, I was enrolled in a private school at Jamasi and there again I had to trek about 8 miles (round trip) to go to School.

Sometimes some drivers will have mercy on me and put me at the car boot to help me out on my journey.

This continued for a long time until my grandmother arranged for me to stay with a woman in Jamasi.

This situation of kids having to travel from their villages to other communities to school is still prevalent and that is one of the major causes of the high dropout rates in the rural areas.

Last year, we conceived the idea of our "Bike to School Program" as a personal commitment to find ways to support rural children who are still going through such problems. Where there is a will, there is always a way.

We started thinking about it without knowing how we were going to fund it because there were no funds. Folks to cut long story short, I am happy to announce that, with support from UNICEF, we have provided 150 bamboo bikes to the Afram Plains Development Organization to support girls within the Nchumuru District of the Volta Region to have a means to travel from their communities to their various school.

We want to thank UNICEF Ghana for such a huge support and our ‘’Bike to School Program’’ has just kick-started. Empowering communities is our delight