The Kalsoume Sinare Foundation (KSF) in partnership with Coca-Cola Company has distributed over 2,000 shoes to school children in ten selected schools in the Northern Region to encourage the less privileged to remain in school.

Kalsoume Sinare, an actress and the Executive Director of KSF, presenting the shoes to some beneficiary pupils at the Dakpema Primary School in Tamale on Monday, said her outfit in partnership with Coca-Cola Company was to give relief to the less privileged in the three northern regions.

She explained that the aim of KSF was to ensure that children who could not afford to be in school due to poverty were supported with uniforms; and indicated that the shoes were given because without shoes children were susceptible to the heat and other dangerous materials on the ground.

She noted that as an indigene of the north, she knew the problems poor children faced and how some of them were socially excluded, hence the need to partner Coca-Cola Company to address some of the bottlenecks confronting education in the area.

The Head of Public Affairs and Communication for Coca-Cola in Equatorial Guinea, Ama Bawuah, said apart from partnering KSF to distribute over 2,000 shoes to school children, the Coca-Cola Company in the past had renovated and refurbished some schools across the country, as well as providing books and other educational materials to promote education.

She said the company’s initiative “5by20 female economic empowerment programme” was aimed at helping needy children and women to improve upon their living standards and assured that Coca-Cola would continue to partner with KSF to achieve its aims and objectives.

According to her, the 5by20 programme was also to help women succeed as entrepreneurs by providing them with access to business skills training, credit, asserts and support networks of peers and mentors. She said: “5by20 is aimed at helping women succeed as entrepreneurs by removing barriers they face, while creating thriving sustainable communities.”

Madam Bawuah said the 5by20 programme was initially piloted in four countries namely Brazil, India, South Africa and the Philippines, and that it had expanded to ten additional countries including Ghana and aimed at supporting some five million women.

She added that Coca-Cola’s 5by20 programme in Ghana was currently providing financial management skills training for female retailers of Coca-Cola, where over 300 women in Accra and Kumasi had undergone a 2-day business enhancement training programme to equip them with better bookkeeping.

Madam Bawuah further said some 1,000 women in the three northern regions would also be supported with access to business skills, financial services and asserts, while others would be supported and equipped to set-up small-scale Coca-Cola retail businesses.

“Others would also be supported to improve and expand their commercial activities such as Shea butter production, ice-block making, catering, dressmaking, hairdressing and batik-tyre and die”, she added.