Malaika Poem Competition

Rhyming Malaria Away is a special initiative of Miss Malaika Ghana 2008, Tamara Aku Dzormeku, in collaboration with Nestle Ghana Limited, Darling Wigs, MTN, ATL and Forever Easy.

It is a poem writing competition on malaria among some selected primary schools in the Greater Accra Region. The competition was aimed at both encouraging the creative writing skills of students and increasing the awareness of the dangers of Malaria through creative writing.

Each school was given a time interval of about two weeks within which to write and submit the poems. Deadline for submission of Poems was on July 9, 2009.

Prior to that, Tamara and her campaign team went to the schools to give an intensive talk on Malaria, after which the primary students (pupils from class 1 to class 6) were given the opportunity to ask very relevant questions pertaining to the disease, which were appropriately answered.

Generally, the students were very excited about the idea and most of them wished they would be the ones to win the trophies for their schools. In all, an estimated one thousand pupils participated in the competition.

Each participant recieved prizes such as products, souvenirs and stationery from the sponsors.

Winners from the various schools were also significantly awarded. The best 3 poets and their schools won trophies and attractive prizes.

Basically, the reasons for this competition were to bring out the talents in students in some deprived schools, and to involve children in the malaria campaign so that the public will learn about the disease in a new and exciting way.

Results of the competition were out on July 13, 2009 and awards presented to the participants in their various schools on July 16 and 17, 2009.

Daniel Kwame Kwakye of Presec Staff Primary School won the first prize and Ganyo Magdalene of Trinity Academy and Nana Akua Tetsewa Tetteh of Presec Staff Primary School placed second and third respectively.

Source: Daily Guide