WHEN FIVE-year old Shamsiya Dahamani was sent to her grandmother for fostering at Walewale, in the West Mamprusi Municipality of the North East Region, her parents hoped she would get the needed care and education.
Shamsiya was enrolled into school while she stayed with her grandmother and then moved to live with her aunty and her husband where sheattendedthe Ebenezer Presbyterian School in Walewale till she reached her final year and registered for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
And so, it all seemed well till a few months to the start of the BECE, when Shamsiya returned to her father’s house in Zangumyakura, a community in the municipality.
“I was at home when my daughter came by herself. I was worried and disturbed when I saw her, because no one told me about her coming,” says Dahaman Seini, Shamsiya’s father.
But it did not take long for Shamsiya’s parents to know what brought their daughter home eventhough she was supposed to be preparing to sit her final exams for her junior high school education in Walewale.
“A family meeting was called and when I went, they told me that my daughter was pregnant,” Shamsiya’s father recalls. “I was very sad and devastated about the news”.
“I did not know I was pregnant, it was my grandmother in Walewale who saw me and asked who impregnated me and I told her it was my aunty’s husband, Yusif, but she did not believe me, and he also denied being responsible for the pregnancy,” Shamsiya says. “So, after some time I left them and came to my father’s house.”
The unfortunate situation put 15-year-old Shamsiya’s education in limbo as she could no longer continue her studies at the Ebenezer Presbyterian School in Walewale.
“I didn’t want her to go to school here because I didn’t want anyone in the community to see that my daughter was pregnant,” Shamsiya’s father recounts. But, Shamsiya wanted to go back to school even though she was pregnant and more importantly sit for her BECE. She also wanted Yusif to take responsibility for the pregnancy.
“When we heard about Shamsiya’s case, she had already left Walewale, which meant she had stopped schooling,” says Nancy Yeri, Project Manager for the Adolescent Safe Space Project, funded by UNFPA-UNICEF and implemented by the Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC).
The project, which is being implemented in six districts in the North, creates the platform for adolescents to discuss their issues with mentors and trained officers who can support them with the goal of preventing teenage pregnancy and sexual violence.
Ms Yeri states that NORSAAC reported the case to the social welfare department of the West Mamprusi Municipality which in turn referred it to the girl child officer at the Ghana Education Service (GES) District office.
Ms Yeri says an officer of the GES met with Shamsiya’s family to discuss how best she could be reintegrated into school to complete her education and that was when, she realised, Shamsiya wanted to go back to school.
So, with the assistance of the GES District Officer, Shamsiya enrolled at a new school, Zangu JHS School in Zangumyakura, to continue her education.
Her new school teachers and classmates supported her till she was delivered of her baby girl in May 2020, and continued to write her BECE in September, 2020.
“Also, we referred her to the UNICEF Safety Net Programme which assigned an officer to monitor her progress. The Social Welfare Department also mediated a meeting between the two families where Yusif took responsibility for the pregnancy and is now supporting Shamsiya and her baby girl,” Mr. Yeri adds.
Shamsiya hopes to continue her education so she can become a teacher in future. “I would want to empower my child with quality education. I would want to be a teacher in future so that I can educate my children,” she says.
Head of the Social Welfare Department of the West Mamprusi Municipality of the North East Region, Alhaji Abdul Wahab Ibrahim, says strengthening stakeholder engagement and referral system for child protection is a priority for the department.
Alhaji Wahab Ibrahim, who in the past, has dealt with various issues of child protection, says the effective implementation of these two pillars goes a long way to improve the welfare of the child in the municipality.
“For us, as an institution, we are in constant education engaging the various stakeholders especially, in the implementation of child welfare policies, for them to understand that child welfare issues are matters of concern to the nation, and if children’s rights are abused, they should try to move outside the family for institutions to come and play their role instead of shielding it in the name of the family,” he indicates.
Alhaji Ibrahim adds that the department has been engaging communities with the child protection tool kits provided by UNICEF adding “We demonstrate to them the dangers involved in some of these things. So, the sensitisation is still ongoing and sometimes people from other communities help others to report their cases because, we visited that community with the UNICEF child protection tool kit.”
He attests to the impact the UNICEF tool kit has had in communities. “Initially, people were not reporting such cases at all, but nowadays, once a while parents come in with their children and ask us to counsel them; sometimes, changes come,” he adds.
BY Jamila Akweley Okertchiri