In Ghana, the free education policy at the primary and secondary school levels ensures that every child can be educated. However, other costs associated with these students’ day-to-day activities are not covered by the government, making it difficult for underprivileged and street-connected children to meet their basic needs while attending school. Street-connected families in Ghana face numerous challenges, including a lack of access to quality education for their children and a stable source of income to support their families.
These children eventually drop out of school, becoming involved in illegal means of earning a living such as armed robbery, prostitution, cyber fraud, and so on to support their families, while others engage in other street activities to make a living. This has contributed to an increase in some social vices such as rape, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, and early parenting, all of which are significant contributors to streetism in Ghana.
To improve the situation of these underprivileged, street-connected, vulnerable, brilliant but needy children, families, and local communities must contribute individually or collectively to supplement the government’s and other development partners’ efforts.
As a result, the Starlight Foundation introduced the “Menso Meka Ho Bi” initiative, to wit “I am also privileged,” addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1, 2, 4, 8, and 17. The initiative aimed at providing comprehensive scholarships to underprivileged, street-connected, vulnerable, brilliant but needy children in the Greater Accra Region’s urban slums to foster their education, while empowering their parent(s), particularly single mother(s) to increase their livelihood through skills training to cater for themselves and their children’s educational needs.
The long-term goal of this project is for underprivileged students and street-connected children to have access to the same educational opportunities as the others in the country, from primary school through secondary school, as well as to empower their parents (s) through skills training to earn a living and get their families off the streets.
The first batch of beneficiary skills trainees under phase one of the initiative have graduated and we are looking forward to phase two, which will provide comprehensive scholarship opportunities to these street-connected children who are wards of the beneficiary skills trainees.
Starlight Foundation is on a mission to educate the uneducated by ensuring that the children, their parents/guardians, and the beneficiary community recognize the importance of providing basic, secondary, and vocational education to children while empowering the parents through skill training.
The Starlight Foundation is intentionally building a world of Hope in which every child can grow up safe to its full potential without any Threats.
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