The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has developed an expanded component of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.
The initiative is dubbed a “LEAP 1000” initiative being introduced by UNICEF and USAID.
[contextly_sidebar id=”pi7S1bz3QkHaGiOZfOACkZjfNNBzBifn”]Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Affairs John Alexander Ackon said this when he addressed a press conference in Accra on Wednesday.
LEAP has since its implementation in 2008 enabled the poorest and vulnerable families to meet their basic consumption needs of food, clothing, health, and education.
According to the Deputy Minister despite the successes chalked by the this social protection programme “malnutrition seems to be a major drawback to achieving the expected targets”.
He further explained the effects of malnutrition on the children which include “a child’s ability to contribute productively to the economy as an adult”.
Malnutrition leads to stunted growth which is irreversible after a child is two years old.
This is the prime reason for targeting poor households with pregnant women as well as women with their children under 12 months old for a period of three years.
The programme is expected to be launched in Tamale on March 4, 2015. The project will be implemented in ten districts in the Northern and Upper East Regions.
These include: Yendi District, Mion District, Tolon District, East Mamprusi District, Karaga District, Kumbugu District, East Gonja District, Bongo District, Bawku West District, Garu/Tempane District.
Mr. Ackon gave the breakdown of the grants to be received by the beneficiary households as follows: one beneficiary will be given thirty Ghana Cedis a month, two beneficiaries will receive thirty-six Ghana Cedis and three or more beneficiaries in a household will be given forty-five Ghana Cedis.
The LEAP 1000 project also brings an innovation.
The Deputy Minister said “the other innovation LEAP 1000 brings on board is that data collection on potential beneficiaries will be done electronically using smart phones”
He further indicated that this will go a long way to speedup data processing and is intended to reduce errors as in the case of the manual process.
The Deputy Minister was hopeful that the effect of LEAP 1000 will have an even longer lasting impact on the development of the human resource base in the country.
In a related development Social Protection Specialist at UNICEF Peter Ragno expressed the commitment of UNICEF in supporting the LEAP 1000 initiative.
In a related development, LEAP is projecting to disburse about Ghc47, 449,626 to some 150,785 beneficiary households in 2015.
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By: Magdalene Teiko Larnyoh/citifmonline.com/Ghana