Swedes Pledge Funds For Educ, Health In Ghana

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday, 09 November 2007
ABOUT 28,000 sponsors in Sweden have signed up to raise 590,000 dollars to promote education and health of children in Ghana.

This follows a concert organised two years ago by PLAN Ghana/Sweden, an international child-centered development organisation, to raise funds from Sweden to support child-development programmes in Ghana.

The objective of the five-hour concert, transmitted live via satellite to Sweden from Awutu Odumase, a village near Bawjiase in the Central Region, was to get more sponsors from Sweden to support activities of PLAN Ghana.

A delegation of sponsors from Sweden led by Ms Asa Malmqvist of PLAN Sweden, is currently in the country to assess the level of child development activities of PLAN Ghana and to explore other ways to offer more support.

Currently, PLAN Ghana operates in the Eastern, Central, Greater Accra and Upper West Region where they support deprived communities to have schools, healthcare, food, security and other livelihood activities.

When the delegation visited Bawjiase, the Programme Area Manager, Mr Joseph C. Assan, said PLAN Ghana since 2006 has built accommodation for teachers, provided pre-schools and primary schools, sanitation facilities and also supported rights of the child activities for all communities where they operate.

“We have assisted 67 communities in our area and have sponsored 6,700 children to basic schools”.

Mr Assan told the group that PLAN Ghana’s initiatives had led to an enhanced community mobilisation and was speeding up development.

“It has been PLAN International goal to get children to have access to quality education and health and also to create the enabling environment for children’s development”.

He said the main challenge PLAN Ghana faced was the priorities of communities, adding that “the use of community managed approach makes each community to manage its project at their own pace”.

Mr Daniel Kwaku Arhin, the Awutu-Efutu-Senya District Director of Education, described PLAN Ghana as “active partners” in the country’s development.

He said “they have enhanced the educational infrastructure base of the district and they are helping to make the new educational reform a reality.

Later in an interview, Ms Malmqvist, expressed satisfaction at the pace of child development in the country by PLAN Ghana.

She however urged PLAN Ghana to focus more attention on the northern part of the country and said their visit showed that they need more support.