GDCA Ghana Developing Communities Association

ORGANISATION

Staff

Governance and organisation

SfL has a 7-member Technical Committee (Board) that provides the necessary policy direction and oversight to the organisation. There are core staff at the Head Office in Tamale, led by the Programme Director, and supported by two Managers (in charge of Finance & Administration and Education Development) and three Senior Officers (in charge of Communication, Advocacy & Gender, Accounts and Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning).

Organisational Affiliations

School for Life works closely with the Government of Ghana through the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Ministry of Education (MoE) as a partner in assuring quality education for all. At a District Level, School for Life works with Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies, as well as traditional authorities and community leaders to ensure programs are run in partnership with communities.

School for Life operates with the Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA). It works closely with the educational stakeholders like Northern Network for Educational Development (NNED), a part of the larger national coalition, Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC).

In 2010, School for Life formed the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) Alliance to advocate for the government to fast track the rollout of CBE across Ghana.

ORGANOGRAM

OUR HISTORY

School for Life (SfL) works to get children in deprived areas into formal school through a functional literacy programme. School for Life provides nine-month mother tongue literacy to out-of-school children between the ages of 8-14 years. The programme was designed to complement the efforts of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to get all out-of-school children into school.

The Programme began operation in 1995 in two pilot districts; Yendi and Gushegu/Karaga in the Northern Region, working in close partnership with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the GES. The Programme later expanded to cover eight districts in 1999 and then to ten districts in 2004 all in the Northern Region. The programme has benefited over 109,000 children who would otherwise have had no access to education.

Through replication, under the Education Quality for All (EQUALL) Project, the Programme further expanded into nine districts in the Upper East and Upper West Regions including some districts in the Northern Region. The last four districts under the expanded/replication programme are funded by the Department of International Development (DFID), after one year of support by USAID.

School for Life evolved from a friendship between Northern Ghana community based organizations on the one hand and Danish development activists on the other. The Ghanaian development activists are organized under an umbrella organization called Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), whereas their Danish counterparts are members of a Danish NGO called Ghana Ghana Friends (GV).