CARENET PROGRAMS

1. Formal Education for rural children
CARENET thematic programme on education focuses on children’s access to quality education and girls’ right to education for empowerment.

Development Objective

The development objective of the Education for Empowerment programme is to: Improve right to accessible, quality and empowering basic education in deprived areas of Ghana with special focus on girls’ education, education in emergency situation, accountability and governance of the education system at local level.

Specific Programme Objectives
The specific programme objectives will address each of these four areas namely;

Access and participation; quality education; gender equity and accountability:

1. Increase access and participation for all children of school going age particularly those who are out of school in achieving basic education through the provision of child-centred and contextually relevant educational approaches.

2. Improve the quality of education through innovative teacher and teacher trainee support mechanisms, continuous systematic monitoring and support in curriculum issues.

3. Improve on the participation and quality learning outcomes for the girl child in schools through advocacy and sensitization programmes and role models

4. Increase the performance, accountability and governance of the educational system with support to school management committees, Parent Teachers Associations at the local level.

Programme Strategy

The strategy involves three key areas of focus which is based on well-tested educational approaches, which has worked in harsh rural contexts and can be adapted to suit children in difficult circumstances (including refugee children and internally displaced children).

The three key elements address:

(i) the need to reach out of school children with simple literacy and numeracy programmes,
(ii) the need to improve quality of education through increasing teacher motivation and empowerment and finally
(iii) strategies which address the improvement of educational opportunities for girls.

2. Adolescent Reproductive Health and Rights

CARENET program on adolescent reproductive health is aimed at providing culturally appropriate sexual and reproductive health information and services to young people so they can make informed choices about life.

To achieve this goal, CARENET uses a multidimensional strategy that targets the different stages at which adolescent reproductive health can be effectively addressed.

• Advocating for action on adolescents’ needs and access to care with policy makers, Health institutions, Educational sector, parents and community leaders.
• Increasing access to comprehensive sexuality education, peer education and counseling, to enable adolescents make healthy and responsible decisions about their sexuality.
• Promoting access to resources materials, including adolescents’ health journals, books, training and video films.
• Providing reproductive healthcare referrals services to adolescent-friendly institutions for further care.
• Creating opportunities for the empowerment of adolescents through the acquisition of skills in ICT, public-speaking and job placements.
• Collaborating/networking with identified agencies to share resources and promote our issues.

3. HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION

Safe Place/House Project

CARENET human rights violations programs will provide a very holistic approach to dealing with child abuse and sexual abuse and domestic violence. These programs will cover outreach and counseling, legal representation, rehabilitation, medicare and raising awareness about sexual abuse and domestic violence within the communities. Along with that, outreach will be done to parents and adults to educate them about children’s rights, as well as families to educate them about women and children’s rights. By providing this range of programs, CARENET will be able to reach target beneficiaries during all phases of their need, as well as to address root causes of these rights violations. According to the Hohoe district development plan, child abuse and children’s rights are both significant problems in the district. Parents do not respect their children, and one of the popular forms of discipline is abuse. Unfortunately, many NGOs in the area believe that many relevant state agencies such as NCCE, CHRAG and the Department of Social Welfare are well equipped to handle this problem. However, these agencies are heavily under resourced and are not doing enough, so the agencies need help from local NGOs.

Child abuse and sexual abuse/defilement has become a huge problem in Ghana, and unfortunately the victims or their families do not have the income necessary to find legal representation.

Program Components
Safe Place is an outreach program to children of abuse. The program’s goal is to make reaching out for help when a child has been abused both easier and more comfortable. Also, immediate counseling will be provided to victims to help them through the initial struggles of abuse.

In the Safe Place program CARENET will train younger counselors and give them t-shirts with the safe place logo on to wear everywhere they go. The t-shirts wearing counselors will be an indication to children who have been abused that it is OK to approach anyone in the t-shirt to ask for help. The counselor will then either take the child back to SAFE HOUSE for more intensive counseling, or contact SAFE PLACE Hotline to come pick up the child. On the way back to the SAFE PLACE the counselor will provide immediate counseling to the victim of sexual abuse, but the main goal will be comforting the victim until a more experienced counselor can be reached.

To publicise this project to a wider audience, CARENET will undertake outreach to various schools in the Hohoe Municipality and educate both the students and the teachers on what the Safe Place program is about. CARENET will also use the local community to sensitise other community members on the program.

The second strategy will be to identify child friendly shops place SAFE PLACE logo signs in front them throughout the community of Hohoe. Children of abuse can go any of the shops with sign and for help and the shop will call SAFE PLACE hotline for counselors to pick the victim. The shop owners will be trained and informed that they need to contact the SAFE PLACE when a child comes into the store asking them to do so, and a counselor will immediately be sent to pick the abuse victim up at the store.

4. Economic Empowerment For Women

The two major factors that disempower women economically are lack of functional literacy and lack of access to credit. As such, over the next three years, CARENET intends to address these two areas in order to help solve the problem of economic disempowerment of marginalised rural women.

Through a series of training sessions and setting up a credit system, CARENET hopes to maximize the earning potential of women in the target communities. Since the communities rely heavily on farming, most of the programs implemented would deal with farming techniques, as well as the use of intermediaries and a credit system. [Thus, in the first phase of the programs, CARENET will implement functional literacy programs, which will lead to phase two of the programs: setting up a credit system.

HISTORICAL PROGRAMS

1. Established and run Multi-purposes Youth Centre in Hohoe that provides a one stop adolescent reproductive health information and services – including Library, Audio-visuals, counseling, peer education, training and referrals.

2. Trained 300 Peer Educators in the Hohoe districts who are currently promoting sexual and reproductive health education in various schools in the Hohoe District.

3. Implemented a program to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS in the education sector in Hohoe and Kpando District in collaboration with Ghana Education Service.

4. Training of trainers’ workshop for Commercial bus Drivers and market women on the correlation between gender violence and HIV/AIDS for 4 local transport unions in the Hohoe District.

5. Implemented Adolescent Reproductive Health information Programmes in collaboration with School Health Education Programme (SHEP) in selected junior and senior high schools in Kpando and Hohoe Districts.