News & Updates
Every Child is Our Child: Early Child Marriages
Last modified on 2011-06-29 14:46:04 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
How You Can Help End Early Marriage ……
Early Child marriage is prevalent in many developing countries; including Ghana. Some Ghanaians see nothing wrong with early marriages for young girls. For them, the practice is security against sexually transmitted diseases. They think early marriage helps young men manage their meager incomes rather than wasting money on drinking and other frivolous things.
Some of these young girls are not worried about the age difference, nor are the worried about their loss of freedom or mobility, so when living conditions became very difficult they then accept a proposal from a man who expressed interest in them. Yet they know little about the dangers of early marriage for young women whose reproductive systems are not yet mature.
One of our children at least knows the value of education over marriage as a means to secure a prosperous future. So she resisted early marriage and now staying with the queen mother, Manye Esther.
The young girl realised that she has the queen mothers and the Unitarian Universalist to fall on for support so she refused to get married and rather go to school, for a brighter future.
Please donate generously towards the Every Child Is Our Child project and help save these innocent children from all these dangers. Any little amount you have can help. Such a simple action can really have a positive outcome.
A RELEASE:
Last modified on 2011-06-13 14:59:21 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
HOW YOU CAN HELP MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!
A story is told of a young child who lay dying on a hospital bed. His teacher
visited and gave him some schoolwork to do. Shortly after this, the child had a remarkable recovery. When asked why the schoolwork had healed him so, the boy answered, “They would not give a dying boy work on adverbs and verbs,would they?”
In Africa, when HIV and AIDS strip a family of adults, children are left alone,
traumatised and vulnerable. They lose access to social services and protectionfrom abuse and exploitation. Like the dying child, these children seem empty,doomed to failure and resigned to death.
The schoolteacher’s simple effort inspired the young child to live. What can you,as an individual or a group, do to get a dying boy off his sick bed? How can youput a meal on the table for a child being cared for by a Grandparent who has no source of income? How can you stop the poor child (Especially the Girl Child) from working in the market in order to feed him/herself when he/she should be at school? How can you help these orphaned children get off the streets and give them a LIFE?
The Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office, together with our partners,
ensures that these vulnerable children have support from community members when their caregivers become sick or die. We cover their health insurance and provide them with an opportunity for a self-sustaining life through EDUCATION.
But we still need to do more to make an impact in these children’s lives. I monitor this process and on my visits the children and caregivers say to me, “I am grateful for your support, but it is difficult for me to go to school on an empty stomach. When I am hungry I can’t concentrate in class, so I sometimes miss school to help carry produce into the market so I am able to feed myself. I know my mother loves me and would want me to have a bright future, but she can’t help me because she is poor….”
I found Odzao Tetteh, an HIV positive teenager, very sick on a recent visit.
Instead of taking him to the hospital, his poor Grandmother was cracking palm kernels and putting them on the fire to extract the oil and apply this onto his body. She could not take him to hospital because she had no money. She could only hope that the long process of extracting oil would have a positive effect on his health. We took him to the hospital and he was admitted for three days. We paid for all his meals and transportation for his schoolteacher to visit him every day. This is what his Grandmother wished she could give him, but she did not have the money. Odzao is living with his Grandmother because his mother has died and his father does not have the money, nor wishes, to care for him. Odzao nearly lost his life when he went to stay with his father. He noted, “My father asked me to stop taking my HIV drugs because I eat a lot when I take them and he has no money to provide three meals a day.”
There are many similar sad and disturbing stories and your support means that we can reach out to these children and give them hope. Not the hope of one day or one month, but for a lifetime!
Help us help these orphans and vulnerable children
Joseph Kingham Ochill
Program Monitor – Every Child Is Our Child Program
