SOS Children Village Ghana has donated food items to over 400 families in five communities in the Ejisu Municipality of the Ashanti Region.

The communities Ejisu, Onwe, Adadentem, Essianimpong and Kubease, all in the Ejisu Municipality, were selected as part of its support programs.

Programs Manager at SOS Children Villages Ghana in Kumasi, Bernard Amoako, said the gesture was from a donation from the First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, through the Rebecca Foundation.

“Fortunately for us we received some Food donation from Rebecca foundation by the First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, to share what we have received with the program participants”.

The gesture is to support these vulnerable persons in the deprived communities as government extends the lockdown in Greater Kumasi which affects communities in Ejisu.

Many residents in such communities have complained about their inability to survive these period.

Beneficiaries

From one beneficiary village to the other, the residents were full of praise to the leadership of the SOS Villages Ghana that visited with the relief items.

Over-excited Lydia Penamang is a trader who is currently unable to sell to support her family due to the lockdown.

“The lockdown has really affected us because I have four children and I am the only one that takes care of them.”

With four children, she has been struggling to fend for them during this period until SOS Village’s time intervention.

For teary Hanah, a foodstuff importer who lost her investment after armed robbers attacked her last December.

Her father then started supporting her until he went down with stroke.

“Things became very difficult when my dad went down with stroke. I couldn’t cater for my children’s educational needs until SOS Village came on board.

“We are really happy they have come here with these items because this lockdown has compounded our problems.  We are really excited. God should keep blessing them so they can continue to support us,” she said.

They are among the many that have received relief items from the Rebecca Foundation through the SOS Village Ghana in addition to the Family Strengthening Support program.

Srengthening the family

SOS Children Villages Ghana is a Child Welfare Organisation that focuses on taking care of children without parental care and support.

It therefore runs a program called the Family Strengthening Program, which is designed to ensure that children especially in vulnerable communities don’t lose parental care.

Over 400 families in all the five communities are participants of this program.

“SOS Children Villages Ghana is a Child Welfare organization but we don’t want to sit down for all these children to lose parents before we take care of them.

So our Family strengthening program helps the families, caregivers and parents to be able to take of these children so that they don’t lose parental care and that’s why we work in these communities in the Ejisu Municipality.”

Two years ago, the SOS Village did a feasibility studies in some deprived communities that revealed that gravity of potential parental care.

“We had many children in these communities not attending school for one or two reasons, some of them had lost one or both parents and their guardians are unable to support them.

So we felt that we had to come in with our interventions to strengthen these families to empower these caregivers so that they will be able to take care of their own children”, he explained.

It is a five year program being run in these five communities which started a year ago.

Family development plan

Mr Amoako explains that they employ what they call the Family Development Plan which tells them the specific needs of individual families.

“So we do what we call the family development plans which tells the need of individual families so we don’t profess a wholesale solution for all. So depending on what a family needs and we support them on that side.

"Some of the families need educational support, others need food items, whiles some others need us to strengthen their businesses to be able to support their families, and that is how we help them.”