SECOND QUARTER NEWSLETTER

In this edition

• School for Life Participates in a Branding and Marketing Workshop
• 2018 International Women's Day Celebration
• Empowerment for Life Programme Screens Documentary on Girl Child Education
• Empowerment for Life Programme Launches Campaign dubbed "Leave No Girl                 Behind"
• Crown Agents Global Board Holds Community Durbar In Kumbungu and Tolon                   Districts
• Global Board of Crown Agents Meets With Implementing Partners and Stakeholders           of the Ghana CBE Programme
• School for Life Organises Reading/Quiz Competition for P1 – P3 pupils in Tolon District
• School for Life Develops Jingles on Complementary Basic Education

School for Life Participates in a Branding and Marketing Workshop

As part of a process of repositioning and developing the brand of SfL, a 3-day workshop was organised by GV. The workshop brought together participants representing the respective units of GDCA (SfL and CLIP) and the Youth Empowerment for Life.

The workshop explored the marketing and branding needs for each of the organisations and appropriately came out with key marketing materials and branding strategies for each of the organisations. Branding and marketing materials such as flyers, pullouts and brochures were developed for purposes of marketing and selling the organisations.

2018 International Women’s Day Celebration

The 2018 International Women's Day was celebrated with a series of events to commemorate the day on 8th March. Ghana’s theme for this year's celebration was: #Women Too - Press to Progress as Game Changers.

As part of the celebration, the Empowerment for Life Programme locally-adopted a theme for this year’s celebration, “Press for Progress-Women Access to Productive Resources. A series of activities including radio discussions and a video commemorating the enormous contribution of women to national growth and development was shared and uploaded on the Programme social media handles.

Also, radio discussions were held on four radio stations with participants drawn from the Programme Gender Working Team. The discussions among others, centred on the role and contribution of the Empowerment for Life Programme in promoting gender equality more especially in promoting women access and control over productive resources. 

The Empowerment for Life Programme called for gender-responsive provisions in key government programs such as the Planting for Food and Jobs Programme, which has the potential to positively impact, lives of millions of Ghanaian women, and the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Program.

It also called on Government to facilitate the passage of the Affirmative Action Bill, which will ensure 50:50 representations of women in key public appointments to promote the participation of women in the process of decision.

A plea was also made to women-interest stakeholders and groups, particularly the Government of Ghana, the Parliament of Ghana, the Ministry for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Civil Society Organizations, the media, and the public to intensify efforts at addressing challenges confronting women in Ghana.

Documentary on Girl Child Access and Retention In School 

As part of the preparations towards the implementation of the Empowerment for Life Programme gender strategies, a documentary on Girl Child Access and Retention in School was shot in the Savelugu Municipality.

The 10 minutes documentary highlights the institutional and socio-cultural barriers inhabiting girl child education and the need to break these barriers.

The documentary would be screened in the Programme districts as part of a community dialogue session and is expected to generate discussions around the topic of girl child education. The discussions will become the basis of developing action plans to address the challenges of girl child education in the most deprived and hard to reach communities.

Campaign Launch On “Leave No Girl Behind"

The Empowerment for Life Programme launched a campaign dubbed  “Leave no girl behind”. The launch of the campaign brought to together 8 media houses (Television, radio, print and online portals) in Tamale and in some selected Programme Districts as well as some staff of the Programme.

The launch of the campaign was aimed at: 

• Soliciting the support of the media to join the Empowerment for Life Programme to dedicate the entire month of June to promote and stimulate discussions on girl child education.
• Seeking media space or time to broadcast a 10-minute documentary on girl child access and retention in school produced by the Empowerment for Life.
• Providing an avenue for the Empowerment for Life Programme and the media to come out with common activities of interest to promote girl child education and reduce the incidence of school dropouts among girls more especially at the basic level of education.

The media underscored the relevance of the campaign and agreed to support the Empowerment for Life Programme to come out with very attractive programme and activities to promote girl child education in the region.

The media provided an extensive coverage of the launch and this was reported on several media platforms including Ghana News Agency, Sagani TV, Zaa radio, Kesmi fm, Suhupeli fm, Radio Savannah, Justice fm among others.

Apart from reporting on the issues covered from the campaign launch, Sagani Tv offered an hour free airtime for a discussion on Girl Child Education. Also, Kesmi fm and Suhupeli fm offered an hour free airtime for discussions on the topic of girl child education.

It is expected that, the discussions will bring to the attention of all stakeholders the challenges to girl child education and the need to institute key programmes of action that will promote girl child education.

Crown Agents Global Board Holds Community Durbar at Zugu in the Kumbungu District 

Global Board of Crown Agents Meets With Implementing Partners and Stakeholders of the Ghana CBE Programme

The Global Board of the Crown Agents, IPs and other stakeholders of the Ghana CBE Programme held a meeting which afforded the parties an opportunity to interact with the Board Members of Crown Agents. The meeting was a platform for the Implementing Partners to give their impressions about the role played by Crown Agents in the implementation of the GCBE Programme. Both Crown Agents and the Implementing Partners expressed their mutual satisfaction about how the Programme has been implemented.

The meeting was also an opportunity for the Implementing Partners to state some challenges encountered in the implementation of the programme. The stakeholders also expressed their wishes moving beyond Cycle 5 of the Programme implementation. Mainly, the need to have resources to continue implementation of the Programme beyond Cycle 5 was echoed by all the stakeholders.

Reading/Quiz Competition for P1 – P3 pupils in Tolon District. 

School for Life supported Tzedek to organize reading/quiz competition for P1 – P3 pupils from all the 30 schools that had benefitted from the SfL/Tzedek EQUIP intervention.

The purpose of the competition was to sustain the approaches of the project and to instill in the children, the culture of reading and the need to inculcate a positive competitive urge as part of their academic endeavour. The competition gave most of the pupils the opportunity to broaden their knowledge in vocabulary development.

The reading/quiz competition centred on word identification (familiar and unfamiliar words), completion of rhymes, reading comprehension, among others. Each of the 7 Circuits presented representatives at the final stage of the competition and participants were given prizes for participating in the contest. The prizes included exercise books, story books, pens, pencils and Mathematics sets meant to motivate the children to do independent reading.

School for Life Develops Jingles on Complementary Basic Education

School for life developed jingles on the relevance of education and the need for parents to get their wards enrolled in school.

The jingles also entreat parents in hard to reach and deprived communities to take advantage of the Ghana Complementary Basic Education Programme by enrolling children into school.

The airing of the jingles will complement the programme campaign of “Leave No Girl Behind” and will further generate public interest in the promotion of education more especially in deprived and hard to reach communities. The jingles are being aired on radio Savannah in Tamale and will span a period of 10 months.