The Fifth National Delegates Congress of BONABOTO will take place in Bolgatanga from December 26 to 31, 2006. The major highlight of this year’s congress will be the formal launching of the implementation phase of the BONABOTO Educational Assistance Fund (BEAF), which is aimed at assisting brilliant but very needy students from the BONABOTO area in their academic endeavours.

Other activities will include radio discussions on urgent developmental challenges facing Northern Ghana in general and the BONABOTO area in particular, symposia, clean-up/awareness campaigns as well as courtesy calls on the paramount chiefs of the area to solicit their support for the union’s programmes.

This decision was taken during an executive council meeting held in Accra on May 13, 2006. Members of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and eight Branch chairpersons attended the meeting including representatives from the tertiary education institutions. Opening the meeting, the National Chairman of the association, Dr Thomas Akabzaa, said the executive had a daunting task to make this year’s congress a success because it faced the challenge of developing detailed protocols for the disbursement of the educational assistance fund. These protocols will be presented to delegates for ratification so that disbursement can begin in 2007.

To facilitate the accelerated achievement of the target of the fund, it had been decided to do a public launch in August this year. He emphasized that so far, contributions to the fund had come mainly from BONABOTO members and a few well-wishers. Contacts were therefore being made with various groups and personalities towards the public launch.

The Chairman also noted with pleasure the increase in the number of branches represented at the meeting but reminded them to fulfil their financial obligations to the national secretariat to enable it to carry out its functions which included visits to the respective branches.

After discussing branch reports and strategies to improve their activities the meeting mandated the national executive committee to organise meetings with some identifiable groups to discuss important issues of concern to the three northern regions since problems of the area are the same.

Signed: Sam Anao
Member of the Congress Publicity Committee