Madamfo Ghana provides Children’s Home for Ho
By: Samuel Agbewode
A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Madamfo Ghana, has built a modern children’s home in Ho to help support the development and growth of children, particularly the deprived, which will be equipped with the necessary facilities to ensure their comfort and safety.
The children’s home facility, the first of its kind in the Volta Region, would boast of facilities such as a clinic, library, children’s park, dormitories, and catering facilities among others, would accommodate 150 children for now, but according to the authorities plans were far advanced to expand it to accommodate more deprived children.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the new children’s home, the Founder of Madamfo Ghana, Madam Bettina Landgrafe, said her visit to the country some years back took her to the Volta Region, where she identified the need to provide a modern children’s home for the region, after she came in contact with some deprived children without the necessary care.
Madam Langrafe continued that apart from the provision of the facility to take care of the needs of children, particularly, those who really needed to be protected and given the necessary assistant, her organisation had also embarked on job creation activities for parents who were without any income generation activities, and mentioned fish farming as a key area where the NGO was investing to support parents.
She observed that there were a number of trafficked children working in various communities in the region, including fishing communities, and urged parents to regard their children as gifts from God and help to protect them.
She further noted that it was important for parents to also plan very well as to the number of children they could give birth to and effectively look after.
The Volta Regional Director of the Department for Children, Mr. Edwin Gamadeku, commended the management of Madamfo Ghana for the foresight, because the facility would go a long way to addressing the needs of deprived children, saying the activities of the NGO had had a positive impact on the lives of the people.
Mr. Gamadeku pointed out that his outfit was constrained over the years in protecting rescued children from fishing communities in the region, as there was no children’s home to keep them before reuniting them with their parents.
The Volta Regional Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mr. Barnabas B. Adjin, said it was very unfortunate that issues of child care and protection did not matter so much to many NGOs, as only a few of them were prepared to invest in child-related activities in the region, and lauded the activities of Madamfo Ghana.
Mr. Adjin said he was highly impressed with the quality of facilities at the children’s home, and assured the public that the Social Welfare Department would work closely with the management of Madamfo Ghana, in order to ensure that they strictly adhere to the rules and regulations of child-related institutions, so as to ensure the proper development of children in the home.
The Country Director of Madamfo Ghana, Mr. Emmanuel Kumadey, said his organisation was committed to the wellbeing of children kept at the home, because the NGO was not the type that would use the home as a bait to exploit the vulnerable in society.
He reiterated that the mission of the organisation was to ensure the safety of people in the region that was why it was also investing in education and the provision of potable drinking water.
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