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This grant will address vocational needs of Street Girls living and working on the streets in Accra, the capital of Ghana. In 2011, a census estimated that the number of street children in Accra had reached 61,492 - an astronomic rise from little over 4,000 in 1990. Fifty-seven percent of these street children were female, ranging from less than one year, to less than 18 years of age. 41.6% of the street children had dropped out of school, while 58.4% had never attended school.
These street children live in dangerous and degrading conditions and lack the opportunity to improve their situation. After a hard day's work, most Street Girls sleep in unprotected open places, such as lorry and railway stations, or in front of stores, waking up early enough to allow store owners to do their business. These vulnerable girls can become victims to unscrupulous men or employers. Some of these girls become pregnant and give birth to children on the street. Living hand-to-mouth each day and lacking basic education, these girls have no hope of getting ahead or improving their lives.
This grant will offer motivated Street Girls and Street Mothers, ages 15-25, the opportunity to develop a more stable lifestyle through two types of vocational training and support that will be provided through the cooperating organization, Street Girls Aid (SAid), a Ghanaian NGO dedicated to providing services to street girls and street mothers since 1994. The two programs will include:
1. SKILLS TRAINING IN LAUNDRY AND CLEANING SERVICES, designed for girls ages 15-21,who are interested in leaving the streets, but who lack the capacity to be part of more demanding vocational training carried out by SAid.
• A 3-month training program designed to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes that will enable trainees to carry out and manage laundry operations on their own or with commercial operations.
• Trainees will live in dormitories at the S.Aid Young Mothers Support Centre during their training.
• A social worker will work with girls to provide a positive group environment, and will talk with the girls individually about their strengths and challenges that may affect their future work success, and will support them in their search for employment as they complete their training.
2. ENTREPRENEURSHIP SKILL-BUILDING AND MENTORSHIP for Street Girls/Street Mothers involved in petty trading located in 3 key areas on the streets of Accra.
• Social workers who are already trusted by Street Girls will be trained in teaching simple business practices and mentoring so they can train, advise, support and monitor young people who have started their petty trading businesses.
• Street girls/Street mother entrepreneurs will receive training in the following areas:
o Entrepreneurship training;
o Developing a financial plan - Budgeting;
o Work habits and customer care; and
o Book keeping.
o Participants who complete the training will be given tool-kits suitable for their type of enterprise that will enable them to develop or expand their small businesses.
• Social workers will visit training participants informally at their petty trading sites to offer support, encouragement, and problem-solving, and will monitor on-going progress.
This grant will purchase professional laundry equipment and supplies, and pay for staff to run for the laundry facility and teach the girls skills in laundry for the first year. It will train social workers to become educators and mentors for the girls in petty trading. The programs will be sustainable because after the grant is done SAid will continue to train girls in laundry skills, and will use revenue from the laundry service to fund ongoing vocational training programs. The social workers who were trained in entrepreneurship skill building will continue to use their training to help more girls.
Rotarians will participate in purchase of equipment, visits and monitor the training programs, and advise SAid on business practices and developing clients for their laundry service.
Timeline: Grant will be submitted to D5240 for approval for DDF February 15, 2014, so commitments for contributions are needed before that date. Implementation of the grant would be from August 1, 2014 - December, 2015.
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