Plan Ghana initiates project to popularise girls soccer

Story: Nana Konadu Agyeman
March 12, 2008
PLAN GHANA, a child-centred non-governmental organisation (NGO), is currently undertaking a project at Asesewa, capital of the newly-created Upper Manya Krobo District, to popularise football, especially among schoolgirls in the area.
The project, dubbed Girls' Football Project, is to encourage the enrolment of girls in school and also create a platform to unearth their potential and skills to enable them to grow up to take an active part in the decision-making process at the community level.
As part of the project, which would be implemented over a two-year period, schoolgirls and drop-outs alike would be selected from 40 communities in the area to form 10 teams with regular camp meetings and educational tours to be organised by Plan Ghana.
The initiative would offer the beneficiaries the opportunity to interact with a number of role models and also learn various vocational skills for income-generating ventures.
Plan Ghana’s Asesewa Project Manager, Mr Joseph Appiah, who made these plans known at a workshop at Asesewa, said the initiative would be implemented on a pilot basis in 10 communities after which it would be extended to other places.
He said the initiative, which formed part of the NGO's mainstream gender objectives, had a $100,000 sponsorship from its Germany-based counterpart, while the community would provide a counterpart funding of $15,000.
"Such funds will be utilised to purchase basic sports kits such as first aid kits, jerseys, footballs and the maintenance of football fields", Mr Appiah said. To ensure the successful implementation of the programme, the project manager said Plan would be liaising with stakeholders such as the Ghana Football Association, the Ghana Education Service, Child Rights International, the Manya Krobo District Assembly, the Ghana Health Service, Red Cross Society and Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service.
Giving the background of the project, Mr Ben Akuamoah-Boateng, a community facilitator of the NGO, said Plan Ghana had identified football, not only as a source of entertainment and leisure but also as an exercise enabling girls to unearth their potential in physical activity and creativity. Football also "serves as an avenue to educate, reorient, train and address issues that negatively impact on the realisation of their potential".
According to him, the NGO realised in its 2006 field report that out of the total number of girls enrolled in school annually, about 60 per cent of them dropped out while between 30 and 35 per cent of their male counterparts, suffered a similar fate.
Mr Akuamoah-Boateng stated that even though girls constituted the majority of the population in the various communities, they were usually marginalised as regards decision making.
He attributed the problem to economic constraints, single parenthood, broken homes, outmoded cultural practices and the greater emphasis placed on boys’ education.
Those situations, he noted, adversely affect the rights of girls to education, leading to growing neglect and abuse, truancy, teenage pregnancy and delinquency.
For his part, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Mr Stephen K. Amoanor, commended Plan Ghana for its interventions to support the upbringing and protection of children and their communities over the years.
The MP pledged to contribute towards the success of the project and personally donated jerseys and footballs to the schoolgirls.