STAR-Ghana Foundation and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) are currently implementing the Civil Society Strengthening Programme Shift the Power (CSSP/#StP) with funding from Comic Relief and the UK Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO).

This eight-year programme aims to provide long term support to Civil Society Actors (CSA) in Ghana, contributing to their resilience, responsiveness, and effectiveness in delivering the priorities of their constituents.

It seeks to build institutional resilience of civil society organisations in Ghana by providing a more progressive, negotiated, participatory and widely owned solution to social development work.

Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, Executive Director of STAR-Ghana Foundation speaking to the media during the launch

Shifting power

Speaking at the launch of the programme at a forum in Accra, the Executive Director of STAR-Ghana Foundation, Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, said the CSSP-StP is about producing outputs and outcomes that strengthen local organisations, benefit most marginalised, and most excluded sections of communities.

He noted the mechanism where donors and partners determine how grants should be expended on programmes and projects have not served the nation well.

Alhaji Amidu challenged civil society organisations to find ways to redefine the paradigm that would rather assume that outcomes will benefit the most marginalised communities based on terms agreed by all parties.

“Shifting the Power means all actors in the value chain agree on uses of grants and not the previous practice where they only received and executed projects already determined by donors without question.

“It means we don’t restrict development to just a select few organisations and we are broadening the scope to bring in as diverse public as we can.

‘Shift the Power says don’t start by telling me what the fund needs to do but let us sit together to decide what needs to be done and what will be required,” he said.

Some participants at the launch of the CSSP-#StP

The Chairperson of the Governing Council of STAR-Ghana Foundation, Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye, said the #StP is a bold undertaking that goes to the heart of the mandate of STAR-Ghana Foundation - active citizenship in the sense of local ownership for development, and citizens recognising their power and agency and taking responsibility for change.

She corroborated the #StP is about changing mindsets about how resources can be raised and used judiciously in a coordinated manner to achieve results.