By Edzorna Francis Mensah
As part of its mission to contribute to growth and Girl-Child Education, the Melcom Group of Companies under the Melcom Care Foundation, has donated about Twenty Thousand (20,000) Brassieres to be distributed to Girls in five selected Senior High Schools in the Greater Accra Region.
Director of Communications of the Group, Godwin Avenorgbo in a short ceremony on Wednesday, 14th June, 2023 to hand over the items to schools in Accra, said this year, they have decided to tackle “an area of the girl-child need which has not been highlighted for public attention and support”-hence “the Directors of Melcom have bought into the idea and have provided funds for Melcom Care Foundation to provide about Twenty Thousand (20,000) Girls-Bra to be distributed among a minimum of five (5) Senior High Schools in Greater Accra”.
The schools are: Achimota Senior High School, Accra Girls Senior High School, Nungua Senior High School, Accra Wesley Girls Senior High School and St. Theresa’s School.
Mr. Avenorgbo in his remarks said, this gesture will help restore confidence in Girls and to promote learning among them, but he was quick to submit that, if the stakeholders can invest resources in creating capacity for homegrown production of many of these basic needs of the younger population, the import bill to be saved can be channeled into providing the bigger and more conspicuous developmental needs of all Ghanaians.
Speaking on the recent video publication of a new development showing the process of manufacturing sanitary pads from the banana plant from start to finish, the retired Broadcaster asked, “don’t we have bananas either being cultivated on farmlands and plantations in Ghana while others grow wild in people’s backyards?”
To him, “we grow cotton in Ghana and same can be used to make GIRLS-BRA and other underwears as well as Sanitary Pads which consume so much foreign exchange and attract too many taxes thus making these basic products out of the reach of the common people; particularly the young female school children who come from poor or average income homes”.
He reiterated the fact that the Melcom Care Foundation was set up primarily to provide a support system for critical areas which might have otherwise not fit into the direct state budget as he recalled that “in the last couple of years, a significant area for which Melcom Care has become well recognized for fulfilling its mission of care, as our contribution to Girl-Child Education, is the provision of sanitary pads for school going female students in Senior High Schools.
Last year, Guinness Ghana Breweries PLC, Ghana’s leading Brewery joined efforts with Melcom Care to donate the largest quantity of Sanitary Pads to the Touching the Lives of Girls Foundation International, an NGO which has championed the course for harnessing the corporate support system to reach out to various Second Cycle Schools”.
