CIVIC EDUCATION COMPETITION FOR 14 SCHOOLS IN WESTERN REGION (PAGE 11)

CIVIC Education Clubs in 14 junior high and second cycle schools in the Western Region are participating in a regional competition that is designed to help students and youths to develop a rich and varied understanding of government, public policy and citizenship in the country.
The competition is being held under the Project Citizen Ghana, a portfolio-based inter-disciplinary civic education curriculum programme for students and youth to promote competent and responsible participation in local and national government.
The programme also seeks to help young people to learn how to monitor and influence public policy and in the process develop support for democratic values and principles, tolerance and feelings of political efficacy.
The participating schools are the Takoradi Senior High, Archbishop Porter Girls Senior High, Fijai Senior High, Ahantaman Senior High, Saint Mary’s Senior High, Adiembra Senior High, Sekondi College, Bompeh Secodary Technical High, Saint John’s Senior High and Methodist Senior High Schools.
The rest are Bishop Essuah Junior High, Saint Anthony Catholic Junior High, West Ridge Junior High and Katabrah Junior High schools.
The school which emerges first will represent the region in a national competition to be held next month.
Students who go through lessons in Project Citizenship will learn how to develop a public policy to solve a community problem, and how citizens can have power to monitor and influence public policy-making in the community.
They will also develop intellectual as well as participatory skills that promote reasoned investigation, critical thinking, effective communication and reflective thinking.
The participants will, in addition, develop democratic dispositions that encourage the exercise of fundamental rights and responsibilities with commitment and influence.
Project Citizen Ghana, which is being administered by the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and Civitas Ghana, in cooperation with the Centre for Civic Education in the United States of America, started on pilot basis in March, 2006 in 20 junior and senior high schools in the Greater Accra and Northern Regions, with a total of 574 students and pupils.
Speaking during the Western Regional showcase of Project Citizen Ghana in Takoradi, the Project Co-Director, Mrs Fanny Judith Kumah, said the outcome of the pilot programmes were highly remarkable with students attesting their ability to research on their own, tolerating each other, working in teams, speaking confidently in public, formulating policies to solve community problems and lobbying implementing agencies to adopt their policies.
Since the pilot scheme, she said teachers from selected schools had been trained, bringing the total number of schools currently participating in the programme to 147. Included are two schools for the blind and three schools for the deaf, comprising 302 teachers, 88 civic educators and about 2,000 students.
Mrs Kumah commended the teachers, students and administrators of the participating schools, for being the pioneers of the programme in the Western Region.
She expressed the hope that “Project Citizen gain firm root in this region and become a beacon of civic education, which will lead our youth to become informed, responsible and committed participants in our democracy".
Mrs Kumah also wanted the four-day regional showcase programme to have an unsurpassed success with its snowball effect giving the participants confidence in advocacy, lobbying, project writing, public speaking, consensus building, cooperative learning, as well as equipping them with the necessary qualities of effective citizenship.
"It is my desire that the best school from this region will excel at the national showcase when they join students from the best schools in the rest of the regions next month, to crown the intensive and extensive work done so far," she said.