Lynncare Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organization has launched its Rural Development Program at Goi in Ada to provide sustainable development and assistance to women and children in rural communities.
With the increasing population, demand for basic needs has been steeply rising during the past five decades in most of the developing countries, it has become necessarythat the growing population needs food, clothing and shelter for themselves and fuel and fodder for their livestock.
It is in the light of this that Lynncare Foundation launched its maiden Rural Development Program at Goin to equip young women including school children with skills to be able to fend for themselves and make meaningful living.
Accordingto Linda Dadson, Founder of the Foundation, the poor are adversely affected by shortage of clean drinking water, poor health and illiteracy, leading to poor quality of life.
She averred tthat majority of people living in the rural communities do not have assured source of income which makes their living conditions poor.
To help improve the standard of living of residents especially women in the area, the Foundation according to her decided to train these young women in vocations such as pastries and cake making, dress weaving among other handicrafts.
She averred that throughout their outreach programs, they have discovered that majority of people especially women and young girls have no meaningful source of income. This, she said mainly leads to teenage pregnancies, poverty and desease since most of them cannot afford quality medical care due to their poor financial status.
She also lamented education for girls which was considered unnecessary in the past, and which she said, has suppressed their development and quality of life.
Linda Dadson averred that her foundation decided to launch the program to bring some solutions to these issues.
According to her, Gender inequity is another serious problem, particularly among the poor and Rural areas.
She mentioned that in most parts of Ghana, men have been dominating women in the society as well as in the family, leading to severe neglect of women development.
She said: “Generally, depriving girls of schooling has resulted in increase in female illiteracy. Whenever, there was scarcity of food, males were fed well by depriving females. Whenever there was sickness in the family, men took timely medical treatment, while there have been long delays in providing medical facilities to women. Lack of family planning affected women’s health significantly. Nevertheless, women had to share larger burden of the family, with respect to procuring the basic family needs such as water, fuel, fodder and even food.”
Meanwhile she indicated that the future of food security and growth in our country is dependent on the capabilities of our rural women, but they have not been receiving necessary encouragement and training to adopt modern farming, fishing and others.
She appealed for support to be able to expand the project to other communities.
Also speaking to Pastor Martin Jesse Berko of the Church of Pentecost in Goi, he explained that the Church which has been in the community for the past five years has discovered lack of meaningful source of employment for residents.
According to him, although the people of Goi mainly depend on fishing and salt mining for a living, these businesses have not been too encouraging for the past two to three years.
He explained that those who do farming hardly make catches for sale whilst prices of salt continue to fall.
Pastor Berko said as part of the Church’s social intervention efforts, they decided to invite Lynncare Foundation into the community looking at the successful projects the foundation had undertaken in some other deprived areas, to come and assist their women and yound girls with skills.
He expressed the hope that their women and young girls would take advantage of the training so as to equip themselves and be able to make meaningful living with whatever skills they may gather.
So far 25 yound girls have registered after the launch of the program to undertake the training as trainees hope to see more people enrolling before the program kick starts.
The Foundation also used the occasion to screen over 600 women and young girls of breast cancer and other deseases as part of its Doctor’s Care program.
By PROSPER AGBENYEGA