{"id":232724,"date":"2016-07-20T15:30:52","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T15:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=232724"},"modified":"2016-07-20T15:30:52","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T15:30:52","slug":"parents-urged-to-help-end-child-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=232724","title":{"rendered":"Parents urged to help end child marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Parents in the Central Region have been urged to protect their children from child marriage which has been hampering\u00a0girl-child education in some communities.<\/div>\n<div>\nAddressing a gathering at the launch of the project, Empowerment and Community Action against Child Marriage (PECACEM), Mr. Cromwell Awadey, the head of programmes of International Needs, said the fight against child marriage in Ghana is a shared responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;BbLitcjcX9f93XF3rp3jv7qTg783PCWV&#8221;]\u201cToday as we speak, one out of ten young girls between the ages of fifteen and seventeen is married off in the Central Region which is not good for us. So looking at all these, we all need to do something to end child marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Awadey also challenged chiefs and opinion leaders to lead the fight against child marriage which has effects on the communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to ask ourselves what happens to those who marry as children.<\/p>\n<p>It affects them when they give birth, the children they give birth to are affected; the family is affected; our community is affected and the country as a whole is also affected because the girl who marries at the age of fifteen, has no work to do and so she becomes poor and a burden to the parents,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n<p>He said child marriage is a criminal offence and should be treated as such in order to reduce teenage pregnancy in the Central Region.<\/p>\n<p>He said the project would help to improve girl-child education in all the affected communities in the region.<\/p>\n<p>The Chief of Gomoa Ngyiresi, Nana Kwesi Esuon Andoh, said the increase in child marriage in the Gomoa communities has affected the development of the girl child in the region.<\/p>\n<p>In the Central Region, over 31% of young girls are forced into child marriage.<\/p>\n<p>International Needs, a non-governmental organisation under the auspices of UNICEF, has \u00a0thus launched the project to fight teenage pregnancy in sixteen communities within the Gomoa West District, and the Mfantseman Municipal Assembly.<\/p>\n<p>The launch was attended \u00a0by chiefs, opinion leaders, parents and students.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Akwesi Koranteng\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parents in the Central Region have been urged to protect their children from child marriage which has been hampering\u00a0girl-child education in some communities. Addressing a gathering at the launch of the project, Empowerment and Community Action against Child Marriage (PECACEM), Mr. Cromwell Awadey, the head of programmes of International Needs, said the fight against child [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":232730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/232730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}