The Ghana Football Association, through the GFA Foundation, has presented football equipment and logistics to inmates and officers of the Nsawam Medium Security Prison in the Eastern Region.
The Director of the GFA Foundation led a delegation from the GFA to present the items.
The presentation of the football items is part of the GFA Foundation-Ghana Prisons Project, which seeks to use the power of football to promote the wellbeing, welfare, reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration of inmates of Ghana’s prisons into society.
The Nsawam Medium Security Prison is the 5th beneficiary of football items including jerseys, footballs, goalkeepers’ gloves and sets of football hose. The other items are whistles and caution cards (yellow & red cards). Apart from the jerseys, Nsawam Prison had the biggest share of the items allocated to 5 other prisons located across the country. The other five prisons were the Senior Correctional Centre (Borstal Home) in the Greater Accra Region, Sunyani Male and Female Prisons in Bono Region, Akuse Local Prison and the Winneba Local Prison in the Central Region.
In a short interactive session with inmates and officers, the Director of the GFA Foundation, Malcolm Frazier Appeadu, touched on the three (3) pillars of the project. “The first pillar is donation of the football items and logistics; the two other equally important pillars are coaching and refereeing training programmes for inmates and officers and advocacy workshops to sensitize the public and the citizenry on the negative impact of discrimination and stigmatization of prisons and prisoners”. He admonished the inmates to change their attitude and not return to prison again once they are discharged. “Ghana needs the contribution of each one of us to progress and develop”, he concluded.
Receiving the items, the Acting Eastern Regional Commander of Prisons and the Officer-in-Charge of the Nsawam Medium Security Prison, Assistant Director of Prisons, Patrick Thomas Seidu, thanked the GFA Foundation for the wonderful presentation to inmates and officers.
He further expressed his personal gratitude to the GFA President, Mr. Kurt Edwin Simeon-Okraku for such a laudable project. “For thinking about the inmates who are in prison, it’s my prayer that other corporate bodies and organizations will emulate what the GFA Foundation is doing for the less privileged in society”, ADP Seidu added.
Before the presentation, there was a ceremonial game between the Inmates and Officers which ended goalless.
Present at the impressive presentation ceremony were Second in Command, Assistant Director of Prisons, Andrews Osei, in charge of Operations, Assistant Director of Prisons Nii Armah Aryeetey, PRO of the Nsawam Medium Security Prison, DSP Nanavi Solomon, and DSP Nana Sarfoh and L/CPL GADRI Selorm Justice, both from the Public Relations [PR] Unit of the Prisons Headquarters: Also present was ASP Naomi Fainusatu Abdulai, Head of Football Teams.
Accompanying the Director of the GFA Foundation were Mr. Kwame Koramoah, Emmanuel Osei and Stephen Saforo from the GFA Head Office.
GFA Communications