Desmond Kampoe, a teacher of the Naaga primary school in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality in the Upper East Region, has presented 141 pieces of school uniforms to some pupils of the school.
The uniforms, produced at a cost of more than GHC6,000, were donated to the school on Thursday 31 March 2022, to mark his birthday.
Kampoe at a brief presentation ceremony said the gesture was to help promote attendance, give a sense of quality to pupils and help in easily identifying them. His gesture, he added, was also to bring smiles to the beneficiaries.
He said the donation was funded from his personal savings with financial support obtained from Project Nightfall Organization, an international philanthropic organization.
“Having taught here for four years now; I have observed that the majority of the pupils come to school without uniforms. And this, I have seen does not encourage equality among the pupils, and affects inclusion and also attendance. Also, pupils’ identification is a problem. So, I thought it wise to help in providing uniforms for the students to encourage them to come to school. I also had to do it to put a smile on the faces of the children.”
“The source of funding was from Project Night Fall and myself and in total the amount that it cost me to carry out this project is GHC6,800 and I deliver 141 pieces of uniforms to the pupils,” Kampoe added.
Kampoe presented the uniforms to the municipal education directorate which were then handed over to the leadership of the School Management Committee and Parents Teachers Association (PTA).
Mashud Kambasi, the directorate’s basic schools coordinator, who received the item, heaped praises on the teacher for his benevolence. He said the kind gesture would bring relief to pupils who do not have uniforms and parents who cannot provide the same for their wards.
He noted that the directorate was grateful for the teacher’s contribution to improving education in the area, adding that the uniforms would go a long way to improve neatness and attendance in the school.
“A lot of them [pupils] don’t have uniforms. So, it will impact so much because it would take out some burden from parents who could not provide uniforms for their children to come to school. The children [beneficiaries] will come to be very confident and nicely dressed and look neat to be among their colleagues. It will actually help them in their studies,” he stated.
For his part, the chairman of the School Management Committee, Anoah Thomas Abuzongo, described the gesture as a good one that has pleased the entirety of Naaga.
He said the uniforms aside from motivating the beneficiaries to attend school, would also encourage enrolment in the school.
He said, “the uniforms will motivate the children to come to school every day and the those who got the uniforms, the others will try to come to school so that anything they are coming to give, they will also get.”
He appealed to other individuals and organisations to give more support to the school since it lacks a lot of things like furniture, books and other teaching and learning materials.
Other projects
The presentation of the uniforms is not the first of the teacher’s support to the Naaga primary school. In March 2021, the teacher used social media to court support and to raise money which he used to construct classroom furniture for the school.
Kampoe’s social media campaign, though nearly cost him his job, it also pushed natives of the Naaga community and other benevolent individuals to support the school.
Kampoe also runs a project which collects used clothes and distributes them to the poor in villages in the Kassena-Nankana and Builsa areas.
He is also a leading member of the Sound Mind Project, a Navrongo-based Non-Governmental Organization, which feeds, cleans and provides clothes for mentally challenged persons in the home and on the streets.
Kampoe’s selflessness over the years has won him many humanitarian laurels including the Humanitarian Global Award in 2021.
Senyalah Castro
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