Photo Page of Sunday, 6 May 2007

Source: dailyEXPRESS Newspaper

ANY HELPING HAND?

The Efua Sutherland Children's Park was the venue for this year's
Annual Easter Party for Accra's street people.

Always well patronised by the target audience, it has been organised
by Accra based radio station JoyFM for the last ten (10) years.

For many of the people (other than the street people) who throng the
event venue every year it is simply a recurring scene of young and old
(unfortunate) people hearty despite their problems and rushing for
food.

But the true and rather unfortunate state in which these people find
themselves is lost on many including the state institutions
responsible and the numerous NGOs siphoning monies they collect for
these people into their own pockets and for the benefit of their
already comfortable families.

A night before the last Easter Soup Kitchen, dailyEXPRESS Managing
Editor Stanislav Xoese DOGBE and the Executive Chairman of the Group
Mr. C. K. Mensah joined an outreach team (as they've always done for
many years now) to invite our disadvantaged brothers and sisters to
the program.

Mr. Dogbe observed after the outreach that the number of street people
and the conditions of living continues to worsen every year, noting
that there also appears to be an increase in the number of young girls
with babies.

In a series of reports starting from next Monday's edition, we'll take
you into the life and truce condition of Accra's Real Street People;
advocate for assistance programs for them and also recommend possible
ways of ensuring that some improvements are brought into their lives.

As pictures that we'll be publishing will show, 95% of them are of
Northern extraction, majority of them are young, exposed to vagaries
of the weather, are easily susceptible to vices including prostitution
& robbery and suffer from various health problems.