By Peter Agengre
Through UNICEF (Child Protection Unit) and its donors, the Center for National Culture, Upper East Region launched the Social Drive Mobile Theatre Campaign on Ghanaian against Child Abuse Project (GACA) to End Child Marriage programme in six (6) communities across two (2) Districts of the Upper East Region.
The Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Department for Community Development, Ghana Education Service, and Ghana Health Service collaborated on the project.
The program was created to use theatre for community development as a tool to influence social and behavioural change at the local and community levels, ensuring the safety of Ghanaian children, particularly the girl child. As a result of this policy, the Social Drive Campaign was created with assistance from UNICEF and other development partners.
The Upper East Regional Director for the Centre for National Culture and Project Coordinator Mr. Ahmed Collins-Edwards observed that “child marriage is in the ascendency in the rural communities in the Upper East Region. Teenage pregnancies and child abuse are equally recorded among the people. This could be due to ignorance and lack of education.”
Mr. Ahmed continued that the goal of GACA Project’s social campaign is to “raise awareness among stakeholders, parents, guardians, teachers, children, government agencies, the media, and civil society organizations about the importance of protecting children from all forms of violence and abuse. This includes issues related to self-hygiene, adolescent reproductive sexual health, and child marriage.”
The campaign involved the use of drama performance in the local dialect in disseminating information pertaining to Child Marriage, Child Abuse and issues of Adolescent Reproductive Sexual Health to the audiences in the Bongo and Bawku West Districts.
Naba Gigin Mogre the chief of Dua in the Bongo District alluded to the challenges child marriages have on the life of the young girls and the community at large.
He commended CNC for the sensitization and requested that the programme extends to other communities in future. The chief of Kopella in the Bawku West District advised his people to take lessons from the drama and minimize the practice of child abuse and other social menace.
