As Save the Children Launches the Every Last Child Campaign:‘Community members should start representing parents’- Child Ambassador

By Edna Smalle
Thursday April 28, 2016

As Save the Children International (SCI) launched the Every Last Child Campaign, the United Nations General Assembly Child Ambassador for SCI, Mariam Samai has said that community members should start representing parents.
She said so while she was doing a power point presentation on the Sierra Leone perspective of the campaign during the launching ceremony at the Miata Conference Centre in Freetown, citing the United Nations Development Programme’s report, which states that ‘there is 65% increase in teenage pregnancy in the country’.
Miss Samai said that sensitization is very key in addressing this issue. She also said that fourteen thousand girls, according to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, got pregnant during the ebola outbreak, asking where the country’s future would be if that number was removed from the education line.
She urged members of various communities to be keepers of the children in their communities, adding that they should not wait for the children to get pregnant. She also called on the media and musicians to promote the campaign.
Making a statement on behalf of the Teenage Pregnancy Secretariat, Rugiatu Kanu said though the campaign is important, more emphasis should be put in the area of prevention. She disclosed that 40% of maternal death in the country occurs as a result of teenage pregnancy. “This figure indicates the gravity of the problem”, she stressed, noting that the secretariat is not only working in bringing out statistics of the problem but also looking at the social circumstances leading to teenage pregnancy.

see more at: http://awoko.org/2016/04/28/as-save-the-children-launches-the-every-last-child-campaigncommunity-members-should-start-representing-parents-child-ambassador/