The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has developed an expanded component of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme.<\/p>\n
The initiative is dubbed a \u201cLEAP 1000\u201d initiative being introduced by UNICEF and USAID.<\/p>\n
[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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
According to the Deputy Minister despite the successes chalked by the this social protection programme \u201cmalnutrition seems to be a major drawback to achieving the expected targets\u201d.<\/p>\n
He further explained the effects of malnutrition on the children which include \u201ca child\u2019s ability to contribute productively to the economy as an adult\u201d.<\/p>\n
Malnutrition leads to stunted growth which is irreversible after a child is two years old.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The LEAP 1000 project also brings an innovation.<\/p>\n
The Deputy Minister said \u201cthe other innovation LEAP 1000 brings on board is that data collection on potential beneficiaries will be done electronically using smart phones\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In a related development Social Protection Specialist at UNICEF Peter Ragno expressed the commitment of UNICEF in supporting the LEAP 1000 initiative.<\/p>\n