In the Volta Region’s Adaklu District, a bicycle initiative has begun to ease school children’s hardship.
The “Pedal to Excellence” program entails providing bicycles to poor pupils in the region as part of a larger effort to promote quality education for residents.
The initiative was started by Helga Liz Haberfellner, the Founder and Executive Director of Friends of Adaklu (FOA), and six students from the Dawanu Salvation Army Basic School in Adaklu were the first beneficiaries of the bicycles on April 5.
Furthermore, the donation was provided by FOA members Gillian Sylvester and Steven Sylvester to help pupils travel from Golokofe, Dome, Agblefe, Kpedzi, and other towns to school.
This will “create and provide easy means for children to go to school on time, less tired and above all, promote healthy living through exercise as the children pedal to school,” Stella Kudah, FOA’s Country Representative, stated.
Stella said that in the Adaklu District alone, over 1,015 out of 8,000 students traveled one to three hours to school each day, resulting in weariness and lateness, and so limiting their learning time.
This circumstance had harmed their academic and overall well-being, as well as making them vulnerable to physical and sexual risks linked with long travels, she added.
As a result, Stella Kudah has urged to people and organizations to join the bicycle program and support it so that our youngsters can reach their life goals via education. We feel this will put an end to any “physical sexual threats,” she stated.
Georgina Titiati, Headmistress of the Dawanu Salvation Army Basic School, praised the project and urged it to be expanded to include more students.
Titiati said that the majority of her students were affected by diminishing economic activities in the low-income neighborhood, where they were starved of food owing to hardship and thus unable to focus in school.
Additionally, she requested a new classroom building for the junior high school students, who are presently unable to handle the heat in the overcrowded room of the headmaster’s residence being utilized as a temporary classroom.
