Bongo (UE), June 21, GNA - World Vision International (WVI) has since 1996 put up five school buildings, three hostel for students and four nutrition centres in the Bongo District, as part of its contribution to education and child welfare in the area. The WVI, a charitable Non-Governmental (NGO) had established an Area Development Programme (ADP) in the District to assist the welfare of children in the area of health and education,

Ms. Benedicta Pealore, Manager of the ADP said on Tuesday in Bongo when she took the visiting WVI Desk Officer for West Africa, Ms Annette Schifferli round the various projects of the ADP. She said two of the school buildings that had three classrooms, library, staff common room and headmaster's office, cost an average of 350 million cedis, while the others that had only three classrooms and one office each cost 230 million cedis each.

At Apatanga a JSS building had just been completed and the pupils who were using a Church building and tree shades for classes moved in. At Gowrie Senior Secondary School, a girl's hostel built by the ADP in 2001 accommodated 80 girls from different communities who otherwise would have had to walk long distances to school everyday.

Mr Didacus Afegra, Headmaster of the school noted that the hostel had helped increase the number of girls in school, raising it from 54 in the year 2001 to 234 this year. He said the increase in enrolment of girls had expanded the school and brought employment to some people in the community who sell petty daily needs and provided services.

At the Bong SSS the ADP was putting up a boy's hostel at a cost of 350 million cedis to accommodate 96 boys. Ms Schifferli advised students in both schools to take their studies seriously and aim at achieving the best. She asked the girls to stay in school and endeavour to have tertiary education.

Ms Schifferli whose office is based in Switzerland, said she was impressed at the cleanliness of the schools and the hostels, saying that schools in other countries she visited in the course of her work do not match up. She commended the staff of the ADP for working hard and urged them to keep it up. The ADP also works in the fields of food security, economic development, relief and rehabilitation and HIV/AIDS related programmes,