By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Walewale (NE/R), Sept. 17, GNA – Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA), a non-governmental organisation, has launched a community-driven development project to empower 100 communities in the West Mamprusi Municipality to identify and implement their own development priorities.
Known as the Facilitated Collective Action Process (FCAP) and rebranded in Mampruli as “Ting Labginsim,” the project has funding support from Spark MicroGrants Ghana and Water and Sanitation for Urban Population (WSUP) Ghana and would be implemented in collaboration with the West Mamprusi Municipal Assembly.
The initiative is designed to enable communities to collectively identify their challenges, develop their own visions and mobilise local resources to address their development needs.
The project will provide an US$8,000 microgrant to each of the 100 communities to implement projects identified through a participatory planning process, while the West Mamprusi Municipal Assembly will contribute US$400 per community as counterpart funding.
The partnership, therefore, involves US$800,000 in microgrants from ACA and a total counterpart contribution of US$40,000 from the Municipal Assembly.
The project would be rolled out in 50 communities in 2026, with the remaining 50 to be rolled out in 2027, with each community having two years to complete its projects.
At the launch of the project in Walewale, Mrs Nana Ama Nketia-Quaid-oo, Director for Community Development at ACA, said the initiative was based on the belief that communities possessed the knowledge and capacity to identify and address many of their development challenges when given the opportunity, information, facilitation and resources.
She said the approach was different from development interventions where external actors determined what communities needed.
“We do not come to communities saying, ‘We know what you need.’ Instead, we ask: ‘What is important to you? What do you want to change? What can you do together, and how can we support you to achieve it?’” she said.
Mrs Nana Nketia-Quaid-oo said the FCAP would be implemented in three phases: community building and visioning, implementation and advocacy, and post-implementation.
She said participating communities were expected to meet weekly over the next two years to develop community vision boards and contribute their time and local resources towards implementing decisions taken during the planning process.
“ACA will facilitate, the Assembly will support, our partners will contribute, but the communities must lead. This is how we move from dependency to ownership,” she said.
She said ACA had previously supported 107 communities in Fanteakwa South, Nkoranza South and Abuakwa South through FCAP, with the communities implementing projects including clinics, schools, laboratories, markets, boreholes, poultry and palm oil processing centres, milling stations, soap-making centres, teachers’ and nurses’ bungalows and community centres.
Mrs Nana Nketia-Quaid-oo said the experience had demonstrated that communities could achieve significant development outcomes when they came together around common priorities.
Ms Ann Squire, Country Director of Spark MicroGrants Ghana, said the project was founded on the principle that “the people closest to a problem are also closest to its solution.”
She said the project would enable communities to determine their priorities, plan and act collectively, while ensuring that women, young people and other groups whose voices were often excluded from development discussions had meaningful participation.
Mr Frank Kettey, Country Manager of Water and Sanitation for Urban Population (WSUP), said the partnership was designed to combine municipal responsiveness with citizen-led development.
He said WSUP’s involvement would focus on strengthening the capacity of mandated institutions to improve water and sanitation service delivery, adding that the organisation had already developed a comprehensive digital map of water and sanitation infrastructure in the Municipality to identify functioning facilities and service gaps.
Mr Mohammed Rabiyu Jabaah, West Mamprusi Municipal Chief Executive, commended ACA and its partners for the project and urged community representatives to mobilise their communities and ensure that projects identified at the community level were started and completed for the benefit of residents.
GNA
Edited by Caesar Abagali/Kenneth Odeng Adade
Reporter: Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Reporter’s email: [email protected]