The College for Ama (CoFA) Foundation, a child-centered civil society organisation has organized two separate workshops for Junior High School girls and science and mathematics teachers as part of efforts to promote teaching and learning.

The CoFA’s maiden teachers’ training programme, which was held at the Saint John’s Grammar School in Accra, was on the theme: “Promoting Science and Technology for Girls”.

It brought together 30 participants from Berekusu and Nsawam in the Eastern Region and Pokuase in the Greater Accra Region.

The Eighth CoFA Girls’ Summer Camp, held at the John Mensah Sarbah Hall, University of Ghana, was attended by 19 girls, drawn from Berekusu in the Eastern Region and Pokuase in the Greater Accra Region.

Both workshops were under the auspices of the CoFA Foundation, in collaboration with the African Women Advocacy Project.

Girls in rural areas of Ghana are particularly disadvantaged when it comes to education; they are disadvantaged through their location and gender imbalance; hence the two workshops have been designed to help bridge the gap between rural students and their urban counterparts.

Professor Nana Araba Apt, CoFA Co- Founder, said poverty has led to the abuse of girls more than boys, stating that, “they often carry out cleaning and other household chores for teachers and are taken out of school when the family runs out of money or needs an extra pair of hands”.

She said many rural girls lacked female role models for them to emulate; declaring that “their mothers have gone through poverty and grinding experiences, so they accept that this is the fate of their daughters”.

"Give them access to further education in secondary schools and beyond and these girls will more likely have a career, marry later with fewer children and escape the poverty cycle,” she said.

“I count myself lucky- I was born in a small fishing town at a period when girls’ education mostly ended after class six but luckily for me, my father had a vision for his one and only female,” she said.

Prof Apt said: “Although primary education in Ghana is free for all, in the classroom, the majority of primary teachers still favour boys over girls and often send the girls out of school to clean their homes and do some marketing for them.

“In addition, when parents need extra help at home, it is often the girls, who are taken out of school. All too often, these girls will marry young, have children and continue a life of poverty.”

She said CofA offers a way out of this poverty trap; stating that, “we challenge girls to see that they have a purpose in life, and that, through education, they can also play an active role in modern Ghanaian society”.

She said this was done through a self-esteem programme, mentoring, counselling and cultivating better study habits; to enable young girls to realize their potentials.

Prof Apt said last year, 15 of CoFA’s first group of 30 girls, who entered Senior High Schools, wrote the West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

She said this year; nine others took part in the WASSCE, and are awaiting their results.

Prof Apt said the first CofA girl to enter a tertiary institution, after taking the WASSCE examination last year, had gained admission into a nursing training college.

Prof Apt lauded the Marquis Tante Marie restaurant at Labone, which had for the past five years, provided free meals for the girls throughout the camp periods; she also commended Basement Restaurant and the University of Ghana, for its support at the two camps.

“Now that the programme is taking shape after two evaluations by graduate interns from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour, United States and Laurier University, Canada, we are fine tuning our objectives to meet the needs of our girls, their guardians and their teachers,” she said.

Prof Apt said CoFA, having established its local base for continuity and sustainability, was now intending to apply for grants from, African and Global grant makers to expand its programme and run camps to better the teaching skills of rural schools for the benefits of children, especially the girl-child.

The CofA, a registered charity organization, which was established in 2005 by Prof Nana Araba Apt, Dean Emerita, Academic Affairs, Ashesi University College; Helen Lydia Bedwei, a businesswoman and entrepreneur; and Afua Eyeson, a legal practitioner, seeks to help girls in rural areas to break out of the spiral of poverty and underdevelopment.

The organization has since its establishment trained over 250 rural girls from the Central, Western, Greater Accra, Volta and Eastern regions at its Summer Camps, which aims at raising the consciousness of the girls and exposing them to intensive training and efficient ways of learning.