Poverty and Children

I have reached out to several more international contacts and am still waiting for a reply.  Instead, I researched Ghana on UNICEF's web site (www.unicef.org).  Ghana is a subregion of West Africa.  With a population of about 27 million, Ghana is one of Africa's most developed countries.  Over 95% of children in Ghana attend school.  However, more than 20-25% of Ghana's population lives below the lower poverty line.

Ghanian Children. Photograph by Scott Sernau

In Ghana, 25%-27% of children under the age of five are underweight and stunted due to malnutrition. While under five mortality rates have decreased due to an increase in immunization, Ghana still has a long way to go.  Young children from poor families suffer from poor health, lack of proper nutrition, and poor education.  These same children are less likely to be able to break the poverty cycle. "The Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) of 2002 identified children and children orphaned by AIDS as among the most vulnerable and excluded population groups in Ghana (http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Ghana_reportdesign_July2010.pdf)."

Basic education is provided in Ghana, but for rural communities it is often difficult to get the children to a school location.  More female children attend school than male children.  Many children are street children with no family to take care of them.  These children work for child laborers or exchange sexual favors for food and basic necessities.  Ghana has been working to reduce poverty and increase the health and well-being of the children of Ghana.  Such efforts include the 1994 Exclusive Breastfeeding Initiative,  Child Labour and Human Trafficking Act of 2005, and the Gender Parity Policy of 2003-2015 (http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Ghana_reportdesign_July2010.pdf).

UPDATE:  I just received an email from an early childhood educator working in Ghana.  She teaches in a school that has primary grades K-8. The K class is huge and the grade 8 is very small. She says the difference in class sizes is due to a couple different factors.

The teachers don’t have supplies. They are given curriculum books to teach, but sometimes chalk is even hard to find or it has to be borrowed between classes. Children share pencils and erasers a lot of the times. Teaching materials, such as any manipulative or props, are not available at all. Some of the teachers  make props out of recycled materials anything they could find. She helped another teacher make a clock out of cardboard, construction paper, and a fastener in order to teach time.

Once students reach upper grades, usually starting at grade 4, they miss a lot of school because they have to go work because they’re families need money. They fall behind in school.  Some are able to catch up and others drop out and work full time. They usually go to surrounding villages to sell spices, meats, or other goods that their families sell. A lot of children are left with grandparents because parents leave to go find work in the surrounding countries of Togo and Benin and a lot of grandparents can’t travel that far, to other villages, so its left to the children to do.

A lot of girls get pregnant at young ages causing them to drop out and take care of their children. They don’t have access to effective birth control and some of their religions do not allow them to use it (the main religions are Christian or traditional Ghanian religion). A lot of the girls talked about being pressured in to it by peers and the boys they dated (Peila, J. Personal Communication, March 22, 2015).