Photo of the week: Wanna ride to school?

There are many reasons why some children don’t attend school in Ghana. Classrooms may be overcrowded as schools are operating above their capacity levels. Often there are poorly trained teachers or not enough learning materials for students.

But often, the problem is that schools are too far from where children live, which makes it either impossible or unsafe for the children to attend.

Josephine, Augustina, Cynthia and Pascalina show off their new bicycles they ride to school.

A new project run by ActionAid aims to change this by donating bicycles so that the children can get to school safely. The project is run in six basic schools in the Sissala East, Sissala West and Lambusie/Karni districts in the Upper West region of Ghana.

Bicycles are a cheap and easy means of transportation and ActionAid hopes that their use will help keep more children in school for longer, especially the many girls who miss out on school because of fears for their safety walking long distances alone.

The provision of bicycles will encourage families to continue sending their children to school, especially their daughters.

As girls who attend school are much less likely to be pressured into marriage than those staying at home, ActionAid hopes another important side benefit of this scheme will be a reduction in the number of early marriages for girls.

Now that’s a wheely good result.