The SOS Children's Villages has organised a community durbar to officially bring to an end its five-year family strengthening programme in Tema Manhean. Mr. Dziedzom Owusu-Agbe, the Family Strengthening Project Coordinator, gave an overview of the project and said it was aimed at intervening in the community to prevent the abandonment of children. Mr. Owusu-Agbe said his outfit under the project worked with partners such as the Social Welfare and Community Development, Ghana Education Service, Complimentary Education Agency, and the Tema Traditional Council to prevent loss of care in the family and the community. He indicated that even though SOS currently had four villages in Tema, Asiakwa, Tamale, and Kumasi, where children are taken care of in a home each housing eight children and a mother, they found it important to empower caregivers to take care of the children and provided them with the family and community belongings that they needed. He said the project commenced in 2019 in Tema Manhean after r esearch conducted in the community by his outfit revealed they have some challenges that make it difficult to care for some of the children. He said that during the five-year period, over 300 families and 1,500 children had been directly supported by the project, noting that putting the children in school was one of the conditions of the project. Mr. Owusu-Agbe noted that educating the children would help them to break the barrier of poverty, adding that to ensure the involvement of the caregivers and parents in the education of their children, they provided them with reading and writing training from the Complimentary Education Agency. He said that to ensure that the children remained in school, the needed learning materials were provided for them, indicating that through that, two of their beneficiaries were currently at the tertiary level, with one pursuing a doctorate in pharmacy and another studying civil engineering, while a lot more were at the secondary and basic levels. According to him, there we re some beneficiaries that SOS had to rent homes for them or help renovate the ones they were living in to ensure they got comfortable shelters. He said to sustain the project and empower caregivers to continue with the care, they spent over GHs180,000 in 2023 alone to support families' economic activities through the provision of tools, equipment, and grants. The Project Coordinator also said that since they were working in the community, they also provided Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities to some of the community schools, in addition to providing mental health education for teachers and students. He called on the Social Welfare Department to continue the work, especially in child protection, to ensure the sustainability of the gains of the project. Mrs. Bernice Ofori, the Educational Director for the Tema Metropolis, commended SOS Children Villages for their good work in the community and called on all to create positive change through compassion, dedication, and impacting others. Other s takeholders all reiterated the positive impact of the project on the community and called for more such interventions to help prevent the institutionalisation of vulnerable and orphaned children. Ms. Ruby Tetteh, a beneficiary, thanked SOS for the opportunity to learn a skill even after giving birth and setting other beneficiaries up with trade equipment. Source: Ghana News Agency