An integrated multi-targeted programme to raise incomes of women especially, by introducing their school-going children to the positive aspects of the digital world is underway in the Ho Municipal Area.

Under the scheme launched on Saturday, the school children will be enabled to add value to the subsistence farm businesses of their parents through the use of the internet and mobile phones.

The programme dubbed, Mobile Library Internet Service (MLIS) for Development, is under the auspices of the Volta Regional Directorate of the Ghana Library Authority (GLA), with funding from Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL).

Mr. Alikem Tamakloe, Volta Regional Director of the Ghana Library Authority said 200 basic school pupils, 40 each from the Taviefe, Ziavi-Dzogbe, Ziave-Lume, Ho-Fiave and Sokode communities would begin the programme.

He said the project had provided the Volta Regional Library a Mobile Van with additional computers, a digital library and a solar system to facilitate the use of the computers in areas without electricity.

Mr. Tamakloe said the skills acquired should enable the school children to retrieve and pass on development information to their parents to enable them increase yield besides the acquisition of knowledge related to school subject areas.

He said agricultural related information expected to be passed on include seed management, cropping techniques, food prices and pest control.

Mr. Tamakloe said the children, as agents of change, “will also be linked up with Agricultural Extension officers, from whom they would receive information on good agricultural practices when the need arises, through mobile phone SMS”.

“This will build the children’s own confidence in farming as a viable venture apart from the support they will give to their parents,” he stated.

Mr. Tamakloe said the project, running for a year, was expected to improve school performance of the pupils, raise incomes of their parents and introduce young people interested in farming as a business.

He said the school children would also be introduced to educational games on the internet that would sharpen their capacities in mathematics, languages and the sciences.

Mr. Tamakloe said two teachers who had been selected from each community to assist the Mobile Library Staff in implementing the project and the mobile library staff had been orientated on the use of the equipment and software for the project.

He said the project was coming into a social setting where mothers as breadwinners were often forced to withdraw their children from school because of low incomes from subsistence farming and other petty jobs.

Mr. Tamakloe said with raised incomes, these women could then keep their children in school.