<<Print>>

As part of efforts to promote high education among underprivileged youth in several communities in Ghana, Princess Sekyere Mission (PSM), a youth mentoring organization has held a registration exercise for Children Street vendors and hawkers at the Kaneshie market. The purpose of the exercise was to sign-up underprivileged youth unto its youth mentoring programme. The registered children who fall under the underprivileged youth category of the mentoring programme will be assigned to successful mentors to counsel, guide and address issues that matter to them. The exercise will also enable the organization to identify youth who are at risk of dropping out of school or are likely to involve in bad behavior to be mentored by responsible adults in the community. Recent statistics released by the Ghana Education and Health Service reveal a high level of school drop-out rate and teenage pregnancy among Junior and Senior High School Children. The 2012 report of the Ghana Health Service reveal that about 750,000 teenage girls between the ages 15-19 get pregnant annually. According to the founder of PSM, Miss Princess Sekyere, one way of addressing this alarming issue is by establishing effective youth mentoring programmes that is specially tailored for the underprivileged youth who are susceptible to unacceptable behaviors in society. She adds that this will give adults in communities the responsibility to guide and properly groom the youth. In total, PSM registered over 80 street hawkers between the ages of 8 - 19 years. PSM is a mission that is passionate about positively impacting the lives of the youth and young women in Africa and finding lasting solutions to problems they encounter. It also has at heart, health and environmental issues that pose tremendous challenges to the African continent. PSM believes that these problems/issues in Africa can be solved by effective partnerships and collaborations with organizations within and outside the continent.