The one-day engagement dubbed “CAMFED Ghana-Media Partner­ship Meeting” was also to solicit the support of the journalists in and around the Northern Region to promote the programmes and activities of CAMFED.

It was attended by members of the ink fraternity from the North­ern, Savanna and North East Regions of Ghana.

Present at the meeting was also the Northern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Associa­tion (GJA) and former Northern Regional Correspondent of the Ghanaian Times, Mr Yakubu Ab­dul-Majeed.

The Head of Finance and Operations at CAMFED Ghana, Madam Fairuza Safian, in a welcome address, said the organisation had developed a five-year new strategic plan aimed at supporting five million girls to attend and thrive in schools.

She said within the next few years, CAMFED Ghana under the new strategy, would expand its workforce by making use of girls who pass through them, partner with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Ed

 ucation Service to roll out a men­toring programme through young women graduates to provide social support to girls in schools, expand young women’s livelihood oppor­tunities and build their capacities to provide economic support to girls.

“We at CAMFED value and cherish the role that the media play in the socio-economic develop­ment of any society. In light of this, we have worked to build a mutual-beneficial strategic part­nership with the Ghanaian Media as partners in development,” she stated

A programme manager at the CAMFED Ghana, Mr Candace Bentil, in a presentation, indicated that as part of their strategies to promote girl-child education, the CAMFED Ghana was implement­ing a peer-to-peer support learning platform dubbed “Learner Guide” to help decrease the gender gap and retention in schools as well as changing social norms around girls’ education.

He also said they were investing in enterprise development for girls and young women to create a better, and enabling business environment for the marginalised and rural women.

On his part, the Head of Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) at CAM­FED, Mr Samuel Asare-Danquah, explained that since its inception in 1998, 559, 899 students had bene­fited from the organisation.

He said a total of 90, 449 had been supported to complete second­ary school through CAMFED-fund­ed scholarships, adding that 2,400 teacher mentors had been trained to support girls in 1,189 schools within their working areas.

Mr Asare-Danquah added that 12,642 CAMFED Association Mem­bers had been trained in business skills with over 84,846 businesses in operations through the CAMFED loans and grants support scheme.

He stated: “CAMFED has estab­lished three ICT Centres in rural areas which are run by CAMFED Association Members, CAMFED has partnered with the Master card Foundation to implement the Young Africa Works programme, the Master card Foundation’s strategy to enable 30 million Young Africans to secure dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.”

The Northern Regional Chairman of the GJA, Mr Yakubu Abdul-Ma­jeed, in his remarks, urged members of the association, to always be guided by the ethics and principles of the profession.

He also thanked CAMFED Ghana for always supporting the media with the needed data for their publicity, and pledged the contin­uous collaboration of media to CAMFED’s activities.