FIELD ASSESSMENT (NEW)
The most fundamental element of our work is preventive and the complexity of this undertaking requires mobilization of people in and around the Hohoe district, relating to children affected by poverty and other issues. In 2003 our program for field assessment confronted a few challenges in trying to help the street children in the Hohoe district and its surroundings.
Part of the program entails helping these teenagers to understand the basic challenges of life and the importance of laying foundations for their future growth and survival. Our staff made contacts with the street children at the places where they work and sleep. Our staff meets, establishes relationships with the children and offers advice on programs offered by Street Child Rescue and the possibilities of inviting them to enroll with SCR thereby providing them with the support, counseling and by helping them to focus on growth opportunities over the years. Most importantly, our plan included a framework of outcome measurement as a skeleton on which to build future organizational development. All field workers are assigned to specific areas and keep records of the children they encounter.
Night fieldwork has a more difficult approach and sometimes our staff are not able to make significant accomplishment, but we are certain that this is a more important part of work on the streets for required productivity. These field trips are done every month. We also plan to work with other organizations with similar interests in the hope that this planning framework will help sort out potential support roles, needs and other collaborations with similar agendas. Our goal will be to help all - service providers; organizers, advocates, facilitators and sponsors understand the value and reinforce their operational support and most importantly working on the streets.
Our Volunteer Program
Volunteer with Street Child Rescue Ghana , Teach English or work on any of our youth programs, health care and other community development projects alongside local people.
Ghana , once part of the powerful Ashanti Empire, and featured prominently amongst the most tragic chapters of Western history - "the African slave trade". with her coastal forts, imprisoned Africans were forced onto slave ships bound for the " New World ."….. more
OUTREACH PROGRAMS (NEW)
We at Street Child Rescue believe that interacting with the homeless children is a way of getting to familiarize with their problems. We intend to set up In-Town meeting points where our field workers will meet and hold discussions with these disadvantaged children. These meeting points could be at the Lorry Parks, verandas of shops where they sleep and in some cases we will rent kiosks close to where they can be found. Those children who cannot come to the main office, because of the distance or lack of time, can visit the "Meeting Points". They can relax there for some time and interact with the staff.
The goal of our outreach program will be to create more opportunities for the street children to receive counseling and advice. Literacy classes as well as health education may also take place at these meeting points. The critical work of our out reach program - which our organization could be justly proud of - will not be complete until effective delivery mechanisms are in place to turn these new ideas into effective services that make the street children's lives measurably better. The sometimes-unglamorous work of building organizations, productivity, delivery systems and supplier networks, quality-assistance mechanisms, and systems of accountability and consumer feedback is the final task of any philanthropic enterprise. Yet, too often foundations close their books and consider their support work complete when they make one-time commitments and receive report of accountability.
PLANNING IN THE COMMUNITY INTEREST
The goals of Street Child Rescue are to help disadvantaged young women and men overcome destructive influences of their society and also to curb the upsurge of abandoned cases of innocent infants and the deprivation of the comfort of a family environment. The objective of the program is to improve the living situation of these children by using a grassroots approach to promote self-independence. Through this program, we seek integration of the street kids back into the communities where they may establish and pursue productive lives.
In 1998, our program in Hohoe was confronted with the challenge of trying to help the homeless teenagers to enroll and to develop their interest in education. Our program generally entails counseling and aid to the disadvantaged and serves as an information resource for women, girls and other community residents.
But in the course of that work, our program staff increasingly saw that managing these activities well, and combining them effectively, required something more. Reinforcing the organizations' approach, by giving the staff additional core operating support, but also by helping them lay a strong foundation for organizational stability will help expand productivity in the future. We intend to expand our activities of local importance- for example, job placement centers, after school programs, or community gardening. These are meant, at the same time, to help improve our neighborhoods.
PROGRAM FOR THE CHILDREN
The program for the street children seeks to improve the communities and help protect children from abuse and neglect. We also try to promote community-wide involvement in the street child program.
Over the years we have worked with child welfare policymakers, activists and several community leaders to develop and implement an initiative under our Community Partnership for Children Program. This is to help give these disadvantaged children an incentive to be able to contribute to their community development. This initiative will also implement strategies that will help create linkage between these children and the protective agencies and also other service providers.
The community where we currently serve is the Hohoe district in the Volta region of Ghana.
We also intend to expand our program and efforts to cover other regions and to integrate intensive family preservation services and the few social support services available to us to build stronger family ties and keep our children safe.
PROGRAM FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENTS
Our youth development program is an endeavor by our organization, designed to support the positive development of the street child. We focus our efforts in building a field for youth development through strengthening our institutional capacity.
There is always an ongoing growth process in the development of the youth in meeting the basic challenges and needs for their safety, their relationship and involvement with the communities they reside. So to build academic, social and other skills, our program is designed to educate them to build relationships with their peers, other families and adults.
The interaction with their neighbors and community-based organizations will help promote the realities of a better economic and social environment in which they live. This program includes both national and local organizations that may provide technical assistance.
We are committed to working with these organizations to design and conduct evaluation to help achieve the goals of the program. This eventually will help to build a positive youth development philosophy that promotes strengths of young people and recognize the need for ongoing support and opportunities. We hope that the coming years will yield our target for grants we seek to help support needed for our organization to operate.
MEDICAL ASSISTANCE
Throughout the years, new approaches to childcare have shifted emphasis to immunization as an initiative to the prevention of vast complex tropical diseases and related public health problems. Starving and malnourished street children in our own poor communities are the most dramatic examples of the tragic consequences of inadequate diets and health aid.
Infant malnutrition, a major world health problem, has been devastating in the sub-Saharan Africa. These street children and the homeless suffer from diseases that affect their physical, emotional and social development. Thus, our work on medical assistance, for years to come, will evolve into organizational challenge concerned with logistical, financial and personnel demands of complex and new undertaking. Our health initiative program will play a distinct role as an important element in Tropical Disease Research Program as well.
So it is significant that this organization and other philanthropy in general attach meaning to research, invention and innovation. Our sponsors can be justly proud of their commitment. This service to the street child will not be complete until effective delivery mechanisms are in place to turn new ideas into provision of services that makes the children's life measurably better. Our most challenging task is to build an organization that has delivery systems, supplier network, quality-assurance mechanism and a good system of accountability and feedback.
Advisory Committee
* Eric Asamoah - Business Consultant
* Col Peter Agbeko - Private Legal Consultant
* D Ayim - District Director, Department of Social Welfare, Hohoe
* Kwesi Ampene, B.A.
* Gayon Gray, Nuclear Medicine Tech
