Church – Sponsored Education Intervention For Deprived Children: The Case Of Full Gospel Child Development Centre Programme

ABSTRACT Incidences of children educational neglect are prevalent in third world countries although children are considered as important future pillars of every nation. The role of Government in providing education has hitherto not achieved total coverage despite several reforms. In recent times, Religious Non-governmental Organisations have augmented government efforts to provide an array of services as development partners and one such critical dimension of services is Education Relief Services. This study examined the contribution of the Full Gospel Church Child Development Centre sponsored education intervention on deprived children. Mixed method research was used to combine qualitative and quantitative methodologies to provide a better understanding of research problems than either approach alone. Findings of the study provided reasonable ground to conclude that the Full Gospel Church Child Development Centre programme outcomes have been relatively successful. A major impact is the improvement in both the quantity and quality of schooling attitude of the beneficiaries after the intervention. Enrolments have increased and gains in educational outputs are directly connected to manifest in the career aspirations of the children to become productive in society such as nurses, educationists, teachers etc. At the time of this survey a total of 248 deprive children had benefited from the education intervention in the form of payment of fees, free medical support, free extra classes and free food and other relief items monthly distributed to the children. To drive the vision to expand beyond the Tema Municipality to cover other needy children outside Tema, it is recommended that the programme board should consider strengthening the administrative and resource requirement.