As part of its yearly activities, the Department embarked on a child protection sensitization and education campaign in some public schools in La, Ghana. The selected schools visited during the exercise were Tenashie, Rangoon, and Ghana Police School located at Ako-Adjei, Cantonment, and 37-DVLA office, respectively.
The first school visited was Tenashie Basic and Junior High School. On June 1, 2022, the staff of the Department arrived at Tenashie School at about 8:30 am on Wednesday morning. During their worship hours, the children were taken through the child protection activity of “who does what.” During this exercise, the facilitator displayed flashcards of the different professions and asked the pupils to identify which profession was reserved for either male or female genders or unanimous to both genders.
After the activity, the facilitator explained that the moral of the exercise was for children to understand that there are no jobs or professions reserved for a particular gender or sex. Every child has equal opportunity to join or become a professional in any field they have interest in. The staff then engaged the pupils in a balloon game to demonstrate how children are affected by negative social vices such as peer pressure and sexual exploitation. They advised the students not to let down their guard as they climb higher in their educational endeavors. They should protect themselves like a balloon, as their future is like a balloon and can easily burst if they don’t take good care and protect it.
A total of 77 pupils, 32 males and 45 females, and 5 teachers, 3 males and 2 females, were reached at Tenashie School.
The staff of the Department then visited Rangoon School on June 3, 2022, at about 12:00 pm on Friday afternoon. The children were taken through the child protection activity of “who does what.” The facilitators were divided into three, with two staffs going to the upper primary classes and one going to the J.H.S classes to engage the children in various activities on child protection.
In the upper primary classes, the facilitators distributed Zee Cards to the children. The Zee Card tool was used to educate children on their rights and responsibilities as children. Some of the rights and responsibilities discussed were; children have the right to be proud of their heritage and beliefs, and the responsibility to respect the origins and beliefs of others, children have the right to a good education, and the responsibility is to study and respect their teachers, children have the right to make mistakes, and the responsibility to learn from their mistakes.
This helped them to understand that all children have equal rights, hence prohibiting unfair treatments, respecting others in a humane way, and also protecting themselves from violence and abuse and not bullying or harming each other. Pupils from Primary five (5) and six (6) were engaged in a spoon full of life game to depict how children go through life’s challenges (social vices) by holding a spoon of water in their arms and are expected to cross a finish line. The role of the other children was to attack or distract their mates from reaching the finish line with any water left in their spoons. The attackers are considered to be the various social vices such as peer pressure, teenage pregnancies, abuse, and exploitations suffered by children when growing into adulthood.
In the J.H.S classes, the facilitator displayed flashcards of the different professions and asked the pupils to identify which profession was reserved for either male or female genders or unanimous to both genders. After the activity, the facilitator explained that the moral of the exercise was for children to understand that there are no jobs or professions reserved for a particular gender or sex. Every child has equal opportunity to join or become a professional in