The instructors are all volunteers and include teachers, pensioners and social workers. It is hoped that eventually each of Ghana s regions will have ten centres running supplementary lessons - at present none have more than five. Poverty has been identified as the main reason for children dropping out of school. Often they have to work on family farms to boost the family s flagging economy. Most dropouts have illiterate parents who do not see the importance of education.
Some children have no homes to go to but live on the streets.
The literacy project is sponsored by the Ghana National Commission on Children which says that the drop-out rate is increasing nationwide and in some areas has risen to 50 per cent. Many children have never been to school at all. We realized that if some action was not taken to bring these children into mainstream education, ten years from now we will have a bigger population of adult illiterates - definitely not a help in the country s development, says project officer Mawuli Djokoto. The project organizers are expecting great things from the programme. In the two communities where the project began children rejoined orthodox schools after only three months.