Compassion International Ghana, said it has increased its support for Child care in the face of competing needs of children.
It said in the financial year 2013, a total grant of GH?20.8 million with 18.5 million child support and sponsor gifts was transferred to 197 implementing child partners. This was complemented with grants of GH?1.9 million and other grants of GH?382,054.
Mr Padmore Baffour Agyapong, Country Director of Compassion Ghana at the launch of its magazine and financial report for the 2013, said apart from injecting GH?20.8 million into child support through church partners, it had also paid its due to government, by paying 61 permanent staff an amount of GH?402,696 as at July 2013, up from GH?357,370 the previous year.
With-holding tax paid to the Ghana Revenue Authority as at June 2013 amounted to GH?41,818, up from GH?30, 2012.
Mr Baffour Agyepong said the organization was working with about 206 church partners, reaching over 52,000 children in five regions of the country and meeting their physical and spiritual needs.
He said children with life-threatening diseases had been treated in and out of country, while their parents had been engaged in income generating activities.
With its motto ?Releasing Children from Poverty in Jesus? Name?, Mr Amos Sarfo, Communications Manager of Compassion Ghana noted that the current situation of children living in abject poverty was worrying and needed to be nipped in the bud.
Poverty, he said, had led some children into prostitution and other social vices, and that if nothing was done or society turned a blind eye to it, Ghana would lose a whole generation to the social menace.
?These children will come back and harm us in the future. We need to wake up as a country and build a better nation,? he added.
The event was also used to re-launch the organization?s magazine christened ?Compassion Ghana Today? to serve as a channel for engagement with policy makers, partner churches, allied organizations and the media working in the area of child development and protection.
The maiden edition was published in 2011 but due to technical challenges, the editorial team was unable to continue producing it.
The 47 page magazine features heartbreaking stories of vulnerable children, including those with special needs who have been given hope, differences that sponsorship had made in children?s lives, HIV campaigns and other life changing intervention stories.
It was launched by Rev. Samuel Kofi Dumevi, Head pastor of the Global Evangelical Church, Kotobabi branch, who charged Ghanaians to support the Compassion cause.
These achievements notwithstanding, Compassion regretted that a large number of children still faced various types of discrimination with no one to speak for them; and was saddened by the various reports of failure of the state and its institutions to provide funding for the proper running of special schools leading to their closures.
Compassion International is a Christian child sponsorship organization dedicated to the long-term development of children living in poverty around the world.
Compassion International, headquartered in Colorado Springs, functions in 26 countries, including, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Haiti, Kenya, India and Ghana.
Compassion is currently helping more than 1,200,000 children. GNA
