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The Omanjor Municipal Assembly Basic School (OMABS) is located in the small district of Omanjor in Ghana, West Africa and currently teaches about 700 students.
In Ghana, if children do not have the opportunity to go to school, they end up on the streets where they often get involved in dangerous activities like joining gangs, abusing drugs and alcohol, and stealing. Many of them will experience teenage pregnancy and possibly even get trapped in the sex trade.
In poverty-stricken areas such as Omanjor, acquiring an education is not just an opportunity for learning, it is a chance at a future. Education is hope. In fact, it is the only hope these children have that one day they will qualify for jobs that will pull them, and their entire families, out of their current lives of extreme poverty.
Because the school in Omanjor is working with so many children space is a serious problem and they have implemented a 'shift system' where students only go to school half of the day in their second and third year of junior high. In Ghana, after the third year of junior high, all students take a standardized test which qualifies them for placement in Senior High School. This lack of preparation in Omanjor means that very few students will be able to pass this test to continue their education.
The other challenge facing the students of the OMABS is that many of them go to school hungry. Learning on an empty stomach is very difficult, if not impossible, for these children. Therefore, food programs are necessary to give the students the nutrition they need to be physically healthy and to take full advantage of the education they are offered.
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