Reverend Fr Dr Cletus Kwame Forson, a member of TSF Ghana, noted that having an objective addressing the needs of deprived communities must be underpinned by a thorough need assessment.

He said conducting a thorough need assessment would help identify the actual needs of the people and as well help to determine whether such interventions or projects were sustainable.

Rev Fr Dr Forson made the remarks in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra, on the sidelines of a visit to the Saint Peter's Catholic Church at Ayikuma in the Shai Osudoku District of the Greater Accra Region.

As part of the visit, TSF donated bales of clothes and footwear for those in need in the Church as well the underprivileged within the Ayikuma community.

Rev Fr Dr Forson described TSF as an NGO that served as intermediary, giving information regarding the actual needs of the people, such that whatever need was provided they were sure that the community had the capacity and ability to maintain those needs.

He recounted that recently he conducted a research work about an NGO he served on as a Trustee and did a couple of projects, but realized that at the end of the day some of the projects were not actually at full level of utilisation.

He told GNA that, sometimes leadership was lacking, and they could have addressed the leadership gap, in order to put in place either leadership structures that would help the community to maintain what they had.

"So, at TSF, these are some of the gaps we are trying to fill to ensure that even projects that were done by other NGOs, we can go into communities and evaluate , do some assessment, re-evaluation of the need factor to see whether the people are actually benefitting", he added.

Rev Father Dr Forson said the information they generate would be of benefit to other Foundations, private sector and even to government; and this would help particularly for government make policies that would ensure whatever projects that they were putting in place, would be sustainable.

Mr Gabriel Bleboo, Chairman of the Pastoral Council at St Peter's Catholic Church at Ayikumah, who received the items, expressed gratitude to TSF Ghana, for their kind gesture.

TSF Ghana is an NGO that builds and sustains society through robust, participatory and action research to enhance the socio-economic agenda of Sustainable Development issues of concern in Ghana.

The Foundation exists to develop a global partnership with practitioners in the industries, government institutions, foreign agencies, embassies, private funders, NGOs and other institutions of interest to find empirical solutions to universal primary education, extreme poverty, gender equality, environmental sustainability, women and child development through research findings.

A couple of the issues were youth unemployment, poverty, schools under trees, increase in street children, teenage girls, hunger, early child marriages, women and child exploitation, migration, illiteracy, slums, poor housing and sanitation among others within the country.

These affect our prosperity as a nation.

The TSF is constituted by experienced academicians and professionals, who apply research and other social interventions public awareness programmes. TSF-Ghana stands to serve citizens in the rural, peri-rural and urban communities.