By Solomon Gumah
Tamale, Oct 27, GNA – The Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA), an NGO, headquartered in Tamale and working across the northern parts of the country, has held a health walk as part of activities to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its establishment.
The seven-kilometre health walk, took staff members and subsidiary NGOs of the GDCA as well as representatives of its partner NGOs and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), through some principal streets of the Tamale and Sagnarigu Assemblies starting from the Aliu Mahama Sports Stadium through Choggu Roundabout, Tamale Overhead, Aboabo, Nyohani Roundabout and terminating at the Stadium.
They carried placards with various inscriptions such as “GDCA: A Centre of Excellence in Community Engagement and Mobilisation”, “40 Years of Building Capacities of Local Stakeholders”, “Amplifying Community Voices”, “Fostering a Resilient and Empowered Society”, “40 Years of Increasing Citizens’ Participation in Local Governance and Democratic Decision-making” among others.
Alhaji Osman Abdel-Rahman, Executive Director of GDCA, addressing staff, partners, and the media after the walk on Saturday, said the four decades of the GDCA’s work had brought a lot of relief to communities and impacted national development.
Alhaji Abdel-Rahman said, “Our interventions have been able to impact lives close to 50,000 to 60,000 every year, which is worth celebrating.”
He gave assurance of the continued commitment of the GDCA to building the capacities of community members to ensure that their views and development goals were properly captured and represented in the development plans of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.
He emphasised that “We will also strive to enhance women’s participation in economic activities by training and facilitating their access to financial services through the Village Savings and Loans Association and incorporating digitisation to increase income generation for communities and families.”
He expressed gratitude to GDCA’s Danish partners; Ghana Venskab (Ghana Friends), for 40 years of strategic partnership, which had resulted in transformative development in the country.
He thanked other partners including the United States Agency for International Development, STAR Ghana Foundation, and Acting for Life, for their immense support over the years.
The GDCA’s 40th Anniversary Celebrations will climax on November 02 with a seminar (Denmark Seminar) at Dalun in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region where various stakeholders will share their experiences about the GDCA’s journey and hold discussions on quality education in the country.
Meanwhile, the GDCA also organised a CSOs Football Gala on Saturday at the Aliu Mahama Sports Stadium as part of its 40th anniversary celebrations where its staff members and staff of other CSOs engaged in an entertaining football game, which ended two goals to one (2-1) in favour of the GDCA.
GNA