Three organisations launch advocacy project for girls

The Ghana NGO Coalition of the Rights of the Child, in collaboration with two other organisations, has launched the Girls Advocacy Alliance project in Ghana, to empower girls and young women in all endeavours of their lives.

The project

The project, being undertaken in collaboration with Defence for Children International and Plan International, Ghana, includes strengthening the girls to be able to deal with the challenges that come their way as they grow.

The project addresses issues relating to sexual violence and abuse, commercial sexual exploitation of children and sex tourism, child marriage, harnessing technical and vocational capacity for national development; the way forward, and the perspective of the project and its relevance to the empowerment of girls and young women.

Chairperson

 At the launch of the project, dubbed: “Be bold for Change”, held in Accra last Wednesday as part of activities to commemorate International Women’s Day, Mrs Elizabeth Akpalu, who chaired the programme, called on young women and girls to take up leadership roles to make significant changes in their endeavours, pointing out that women needed to work together to inspire the younger ones to reach higher heights in life.

Madam Akpalu recommended that parents should not restrict their children from expressing their views, rather they should support them, and guide them through their career, stressing: “As women, we should ensure that our girls aspire higher, remain in their school, and also to make sure that they are not prevented from achieving their goals.”

Sexual violence

For her part, the Managing Consultant at Apex LawConcult, Mrs Sheila Minka-Premo, urged young women and girls to desist from sharing their nude pictures with their boyfriends, or allowing them to take their nude photos.

She observed that those acts could damage the girlS’ reputation, affect them psychologically and could also affect them physically, saying they had observed that there had been an increased trend among young girls who allowed their boyfriends to take nude pictures of them; when the relationship ends, the guys put them out on social media.

Touching on sexual violence and abuse, Mrs Minka-Premo stated that the girls needed to be empowered to be able to deal with issues relating to the Internet and how people used it to abuse their rights, and advised parents and stakeholders not to prevent the children from sharing their experience relating to issues of sexual violence or abuse and other social challenges.

The President of the Ghana NGO Coalition of the Rights of the Child (GNCRC), Ms Josephine Kunadu Kondua, stated that there was the need for the advocacy project to advocate the empowerment of girls and added that the five-year project (2017 - 2022), funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Embassy, would be implemented in five regions across the country, namely the Greater Accra, Central, Northern, Eastern and Ashanti regions.