By Philip Tengzu
Wa, (UW/R), April 18, GNA – Members of the She Leads Social Movement in the Upper West Region have received leadership and advocacy training to sharpen their skills towards achieving a gender-sensitive society for all.
Some Girls and Young Women (GYW) beneficiaries of the She Leads Project in the Wa Municipality also benefited from the training organised by the Movement, a group of young advocates of the She Leads project.
The participants, drawn from tertiary institutions and the She Leads Project communities, were taken through political leadership and governance structures of Ghana, the GEA programmes for Ghanaians as well as peace and security.
The Community Aid for Rural Development (CARD-Ghana) is implementing the She Leads Project in the region in partnership with Plan International Ghana to increase sustained influence of GYW on decision-making and transform gender norms in formal and informal institutions.
Madam Ernestina Biney, the Acting Executive Director of CARD-Ghana, said the She Leads project had chalked successes, with some girls that the project had empowered contesting and winning student elections at the Senior High and tertiary institutions.
She said for the first time in the history of the Wa Technical Institute, females had been elected respectively as Dining Hall prefect, the President and Vice President of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC).
Madam Biney added that some beneficiaries of the project had also testified that their confidence levels had increased through the training they received.
She said the project was targeting to impact at least 1,000 GYW in the region within 2024 and appealed for the support and cooperation of all necessary stakeholders to enable the project to achieve that target to help create a better society for all.
Madam Felicia Baganiah, the President of the She Leads Social Movement, said the workshop was in furtherance of the campaign goal of bridging the gender gaps and increasing the participation of GYW in decision-making and leadership.
She said it was glaring that some women were still missing out on the decision-making table and leadership at the local and national levels and that had impeded their progress and development.
The training sought to offer the participants an insight into how governance structure works, increase their security consciousness, and introduce them to the available opportunities for young people at the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA) and how they could access those opportunities, she said.
Talking about peace and security, Mr Haruna A. Moomin, a teacher at the Wa Senior High School, encouraged the participants to be peace ambassadors wherever they found themselves as that was necessary for every leader.
He also advised them not to be swayed by their youthful exuberance to allow themselves to be exploited by politicians for cause mayhem, especially during elections.
“You can do politics, but know your target, how to achieve that target and work towards achieving it,” Mr Moomin said.
Mr Yahaya Abdul-Walliu, the Assembly Member for the Kperisi Electoral Area in the Wa Municipality, stressed the need for the GYW to always aspire to lead wherever they found themselves as that would enable them to participate in decision-making processes.
GNA