is a 20 member Registered Basic School Children between the ages of 9 and 14 years from various communities and schools initiated in January 2007.Background
The child living in a deprived area is seen as an individual who can play a greater role to the development of Ghana in the near future, but he/she is marginalized due to social and economic circumstances.
However, every ordinary or prominent person has passed through the stages of life from being a child with tender care and upbringing to reach the stage he/she has gained.
Quality education
especially for girls and women, is the most powerful weapon in the global fight against poverty, disease, and hunger.
That’s why when world leaders agreed to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to end world poverty, two of the eight goals focused on education for all.
In fact, they made getting more girls into school the very first of all the MDGs to fall due – with a target date 2005.
UNESCO, ILO have it that 104 million children are currently out of school (57% girls) and one out of three children in the world will either never go to school or drop out before finishing primary level, while UNESCO also records that 20 million more girls than boys are out of school at primary level. Only half of developing countries have equal numbers of girls and boys in primary school, and only 20% have achieved gender parity at secondary level.
In another development
reports by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and ILO/IPEC.2003. (Ghana Child Labour Survey) indicates that, about 1.27 million children in Ghana between five and 17 years of age are engaged in activities classified as child labour.
The report further indicates that 1.03 million children engaged in child labour were under the age of 13 years.
The children are involved in activities such as prostitution, drug peddling, domestic work, farming, fishing, street hawking, stone breaking, sand winning, forestry, animal rearing, and "Kaya ye" and are working in dangerous and hazardous working environments. Children, who should, of necessity, be in school acquiring knowledge and life-planning skills are instead engaged in the activities described above.
Therefore it is incumbent on us that, the rights of children, their mental and physical needs be addressed to prepare them adequately for a better future.
This concern has given rise to the formation of numerous children organizations to focus on the child. However, the reality is that, the urban child is given more attention to the neglect of the rural child. Most of the activities of these well meaning organizations are regrettably centered on children in the urban areas, creating a gap between the rural and the urban child in their development. This development is worrying to many, something that has influenced our desire to form an organization – MALTITI CHILD FOUNDATION - to bridge the gap.
MALTITI CHILD FOUNDATION (MCF) was initiated to gear its efforts towards advocating for support to the rural child to also meaningfully participate in social and economic programmes in Rural Communities, so as to facilitate access for them to be also involved in national development.