ActionAid: 23 years of service in the Upper East
ActionAid started its operations in Ghana at Sapeliga and Teshie in the Bawku West District in the Upper East Region in June, 1990, during which it introduced many interventions to eradicate poverty and injustice, and has since not looked back by extending its operations to other districts and regions in the country.
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When ActionAid started work in Ghana, they were initially more focused on service delivery and worked with communities to identify their needs, and very often worked to provide those needs, and at Sapeliga and Teshie, their interventions sought mainly to improve access to basic social services such as education, health care, water and sanitation and improving food security by facilitating access to agricultural practices and access to productive resources.
Since 1990, ActionAid has built 28 school blocks, three nurses' quarters, one clinic, two teachers' quarters, seven dams, 22 grain and seed banks, three tube wells, seven KVIP toilet facilities and seven grinding mills in the Upper East Region alone.
During these years, ActionAid worked with key partners in the region to establish and strengthen local structures such as parent-teacher associations and school and dam management committees, traditional birth attendants and seed store committees
At a ceremony to honour ActionAid Development partners at Bolgatanga, the Upper East Programme Manager of ActionAid Ghana, Mr James Kusi-Boama, said as they responded to the immediate needs of the poor and excluded , they realised that was not a sustainable response.
"We realised that it was critical that we addressed the root and structural causes of poverty at the local, national or international levels and that led to the adoption of human rights based approach (HRBA) in all our interventions".
He said HRBA meant that ActionAid Ghana and its partners acknowledged the interconnection between poor people,poverty and human rights, indicating that they believed that the poor should understand the causes of their poverty from an analysis of exclusionary power dynamics rather than view their poverty as self-caused or as a result of natural phenomenon.
He said ActionAid used REFLECT which was a participatory methodology to assist communities identify their own development needs and also develop strategies to implement them.
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Mr Kusi-Boama said ActionAid had been able to facilitate processes in communities to create change in some negative cultural practices like female genital mutilation (FGM) and widowhood rites, adding that they were proud of the changes they were creating at the personal and grassroots levels.
He said their annual girls' camp had changed the lives of over 1000 girls by exposing them to the possibilities of what they could achieve with hard work , a focus on their education and dream since it was started 12 years ago.
In addition to the national girls' camp, he said similar camps were organised at the regional level where girls from all the districts were brought together to meet female role models to learn from their experiences.
"ActionAid and partners in the Upper East Region have facilitated the formation of 18 girls' and 15 child rights clubs in some of our communities. The key objective is to build in them leadership and decision making skills, build their confidence level and educate them on their rights and responsibilities".
He said ActionAid and its partners had established 16 community-based-anti violence Teams (COMBATS) in their communities to ensure no violence was meted out to community members, especially women and girls, and had also facilitated the formation of farmer groups and networks which had been trained on improved farming techniques and provided them with improved varieties of seeds and inputs.
The Deputy Country Director of ActionAid Ghana , Alhaji Yakubu Sani, said with support from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ActionAid was implementing the Women Rights to Sustainable Livelihood Project under the Leadership and Opportunities for Women which was a multi-country project being implemented in Ghana and Rwanda from 2012 to 2015.
"It will also strengthen women's political participation and contribute to MDG 3. It will also employ proven strategies for change, including participatory research and human rights training, to ensure women learnt about their rights, adding that the project was envisaged to create those changes in the lives of 3000 women smallholder farmers in the Talensi and Nabdam districts in the Upper East Region and Nanumba South District in the Northern Region"
The Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Daniel Syme, said according to a study carried out by ActionAid Ghana on Women Rights and Sustainable Livelihood, about 75 per cent of women smallholder farmers did not have access to secured land for farming and also lacked extension services and inputs like tractor services and seeds, and that only 13 per cent of them earned income, having no time for leisure.