The items, worth over 11,000 Ghana cedis comprised bags of GIDA Rice, cartons of Wilmar Frytol Oil, carbonated soap, mineral water and vitamin C.

Mr Andrews Addoquaye Tagoe, the Deputy General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union of the Trades Union Congress (GAWU of TUC), presented the items on behalf of the CSOs to the shelters.

He said the donation formed part of a broad national intervention covering the Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi Metropolitan areas with additional targets comprising Persons with Disability, the aged and mentally challenged.

The recipient shelters include James Town Gbek3bii at James Town;
No Limit Charity Foundation - James Town; Hope for Africa - Ussher Town,
Madina Street Children Shelter under Department of Social Welfare, and six other children shelters from James Town, Kasoa and Madina.

Mr Tagoe said the items were to support the poor and vulnerable through these times of uncertainty.

The CSOs Platform on the SDGs, working together with its strategic partners in the wake of the COVID-19 national emergency, established the CSO COVID-19 Fund to complement the efforts by the Government to contain the spread of the virus.

The Fund is intended to coordinate the efforts and actions of all CSOs, networks and associations and to leverage on the strength of its membership to address some of the inequality challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic might create in the spirit of leaving no-one-behind.

Mr Tagoe said the National Secretariat, upon establishing the Fund, put together a high-level committee to provide leadership and oversight on all issues pertaining to the Fund.

"The membership of the committee is drawn from member institutions and strategic partners of the Platform. The members come from SEND-Ghana, International Child Development Programme; Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, STAR Ghana Foundation, West Africa Civil Society Institute, and Ghana Agricultural Workers Union, among others," he said.

Mr Tagoe said the committee, upon deliberations, decided to phase the implementation and had, therefore, settled on Persons with Disability, Street Children, Aged/Widows and those under mental healthcare.

"On this, the Committee selected the respective institutions to partner in reaching the selected constituents in the areas that were put under partial lockdown, that is Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi, agreeing to 60:40 ratio for the disbursement."

The Committee also agreed that the constituents in each of the geographic areas be allocated items according to the percentage sharing captured as: Aged/Widows - 20 per cent; Mental Health - 15 per cent; Street Children - 40 per cent, and PWDs - 25 per cent.

Mr Tagoe said it was possible because of donations that came from individuals and institutions who identified with the plight of the vulnerable and believed in the Fund.

"We are deeply indebted to each contributor. It is our hope that these items will go a long way to provide relief for these identified groups and beneficiaries," he said.

Mr Solomon Tetteh of the Gamashie Development Association received the items to be distributed to the street children housed in over 10 shelters.

He commended the CSOs Platform for the gesture and promised that the items would be equitably distributed to the beneficiaries.

Partner institutions will serve as the conduit through which direct beneficiaries will receive the items.

This approach is to help follow the prescribed social distancing protocols now in place.