Otinibi is a small farming community in the Ga East Municipality, which has a myriad of developmental issues, but the most worrying one is that of teenage pregnancy. It is an idyllic place harking back to quieter times, a far cry from the bustle of the city whose limits are only a 10 minute drive away. The people here are predominantly farmers, who grow crops like maize, cassava and tomatoes. The community experiences the endemic problem of interruptions in water and electricity supplies. But for community leaders, the incidence of teenage pregnanacy and the lack of education is the biggest obstacle in the way of development. Joseph Martey Laryea, an elder traces the problem to the introduction of stone quarrying activities into the community. “The youth drop out of school to quarry stone because they think it is a way to get rich quick” Junior high school girls are the usual victims with several dropping out each year due to pregnancy. The chief of Otinibi, Augustus Niiklu Klufio put the blame largely on the shoulder of the parents who fail to monitor their wards. “At ten or eleven at night you see children of school-going age outside, dancing Azonto!” But the parent put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the girls. Naa Lamley Lamptey, a mother told Joynews that they educate their daughter about sex and try to teach them on the safe periods for intercourse to avoid pregnancy, but such talk only attracts derision from their wards. “When we advise the girls they simply ignore us. Sometimes they insult mothers who tell them to stay away from boys. So we just teach them about ways to avoid getting pregnant.” Joy news spoke to an 18 year old mother, Patience Adogosu, whose story was rather different, she said her father suspected that she had a boyfriend so pulled her out of school. Two years later she got pregnant. “I was at home for a long while, and then my father enrolled me to train in hairdressing. I had six months to finish the course when I got pregnant.” Vivienne Klutse, 15 yrs, is in JHS 2 got pregnant when she was thirteen. “There was a boy who used to worry me in my neighbourhood…one day when I was sent he pulled me into a plantation and had sex with me. He warned me not to tell anybody. About seven months later my class teacher saw I was pregnant and told the headmaster who told my father” Vivienne’s father called for the arrest of the boy who impregnated his daughter. The boy was released after his family paid a fine. And since then they have ignored Vivienne and her two year old son, Kwaku. Vivienne went back to school two months after delivery and has topped her class in the past academic year. She has big plans for the future. “I want to be a doctor in future” The chief and elders of Otinibi want more girls encouraged to go back to school and perhaps on scholarship basis, considering the poverty levels in the community. Meanwhile Benjamin Annang Sowah, the advocacy and resource mobilization coordinator of the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana says their outfit is woefully under-resourced for its campaigns against teenage pregnancy. He says the focus of their advocacy is to encourage peer-to-peer education on safe sex, rather than preaching abstinence, since it is evident that children are getting sexually active younger. “Now that we have heard about the problem in Otinibi, we would not be able to go there immediately but we would try and organize ourselves to visit the community and do some peer-to-peer education training”