Child Protection Policy workshop organized at St Johns Integrated Senior High Technical School-Navrongo UER

About 72 teachers and 714 students have benefited a from day’s workshop on Child Protection Policy.

The workshop which was organized by the Catholic Diocese under the auspices of the Most Rt. Rev. Bishop Alfred Adjenta of Navrongo-Bolgatanga and sponsored by Kindermissionswerk of Germany.


The Most Rt. Rev. Bishop Adjenta is noted as the first catholic Bishop among his colleagues to organize the child protection workshop in the country.

It was organized at the St Johns Integrated Senior High Technical School in Navrongo  Kassena Nankana District of the Upper East Region.

The aim of the workshop was to educate the teachers about the child protection policy document, why they are being educated about it, and the benefits the teachers, parents, students, community and the nation at large stands to gain from the policy.

In an interview with Radio Ghana, the Regional Manager, Catholic Education Unit of the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Diocese Rev. Sister Bernadine Pemi said, the Child Protection Policy is generally about the management of children, provision of safe learning environment for them while in school and how these management’s skills can be adopted at homes and in communities by the teachers, parents and guardians.

She disclosed that, some of the teachers at times are abusers themselves, citing canning as a correctional measure and sexual abuse by some teachers. She also proposed that teachers should also keep an eye on students in the company of volunteers.

This is because, some volunteer are child abusers in their respective countries and can take advantage of school activities such as excursions and site seeing to abuse the children. 

Sister Pemi indicated that, the core mandate of the policy is to create a conducive atmosphere for learning.

One the part of the students, three facilitators from the Diocese Rev. Father Tommy Hayden with the presentation brothers, a retired educationist of Sandema Senior High Technical School Patricia Yizura and the Programme Head of Social Welfare James Agambilla interacted with the students.

They showed them pictures with various forms of the abuses to identify in case, any of such abuses and encouraged the students to identity such cases, how each abuse is meted out to them and the various channels  via which they can report abuse to the appropriated authorities. 

Most importantly, the children were taken through the Child rights Act, Act 560 of 1998 and the Juvenile Justice Act, 2003 Act 653

Rev father Tommy Hayden member of the St Patrick missionary Society. Advised the students to study hard and that it was the responsibility of the church to guide and protect them to become good future leaders.