Six border communities in the Upper East Region have benefited from Livelihood Projects; satellite farms with mechanized boreholes, fitted with generators and accessories for constant water supply.
The beneficiary border communities are Pusiga, Kulungungu, Pulimakuam, Mognori, Paga, and Namoo. The establishment of the satellite farms at the border communities come at the back of the International Organization on Migration(IOM), the funding partners through STAR-Ghana Foundation, as the implementing partner.
The Projects are aimed at supporting the border communities to build resilience toward threats to radicalization and violent extremism, especially for women and children considering the instability in neighbouring countries.
STAR-Ghana Foundation and the IOM have been promoting dialogue with community members and security agencies to ensure peaceful co-existence at the border communities.
Executive Director of STAR-Ghana Foundation, Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu told a gathering at the handing over ceremony that the projects relate uniquely. He maintains, they are both geared towards building the resilience of border communities against violent extremism and other border security threats.
Alhaji Tanko stated that the Community Cohesion project under which the dialogue platform has been formed and operationalised, seeks to promote cohesion and community participation in their own security by providing inclusive spaces for dialogue and collaborations between community members and border security agencies.
On the other hand, the Community Livelihood Enhancement Project complements the Cohesion Project by providing targeted small-scale livelihood support to help build community resilience by reducing economic inequalities and drivers that make sections of the population vulnerable to radicalisation and recruitment by violent extremist groups. This has implications for not just the border communities, but the nation at large. The completed projects will be in direct control of the communities and the assemblies.
Among the things handed over to the communities are, fenced gardens, 100 bags of fertilizer, 12 generators, 12 water pumps and hose, and water storage tanks.
Related projects
94 year old retired teacher donates pension to the classrooms project
In times where weak school structures are collapsing and killing pupils, a 94-year-old retired teacher, Madam Alexina Adjah Cudjoe has donated her pension benefits to JoyNews to support The Multimedia Group’s Classroom Project.
Her donation comes after Multimedia launched an initiative to mobilize public support and local resources to help two communities to rehabilitate and rebuild their weak primary school buildings.
The Braman Jamara D/A Basic School in the Central Region and the Zoonayili E/A Primary School in Tolon in the Northern Region are the beneficiary schools under the project.
Explaining to JoyNews the motivation behind her act of charity, Madam Cudjoe said she finds it worrisome seeing school children studying in weak school buildings.
“I also have children in other classrooms so when I hear about it, I feel uncomfortable about it. So I felt like sending some money.”
The 94-year-old retired teacher also urged the general public to extend helping hands to people who are in dire need.
“Anybody who just hears about it and is also interested should do the same so our children will learn comfortably.”
The Project Lead at JoyNews, Emefa Ewoenam Atiamoah-Eli received the donation on Wednesday, February 2, at the premises of Joy 99.7 FM.
Mrs. Adjah-Cudjoe also extended her benevolence to a hole-in-heart patient whose story was told on JoyNews.
She was aided by one of her sons who told JoyNews, his mother has always been a fan of the station.
For your cash donations to the Classroom Project, send Momo to 0593038832 – The Multimedia Group, Joy FM. You may also call, 0302211688 for further inquiries.
A total of GHS51,000 has been raised out of a target of GHS155,000 required for the two school blocks. Work is currently underway at the Breman Jamara site. Your support is very much appreciated.
The Classroom Project, is under the theme, ‘Promoting Social Justice Through Philanthropy’. It is supported by the STAR Ghana Foundation with funding from the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Attached is a video of the gesture.
STAR-Ghana 2 produces significant outcomes - End of Programme Evaluation (2015-2020)
Adjabu Advisors, evaluators of the second phase of the STAR-Ghana Programme found that the programme produced significant outcomes in five themed areas: Access and quality of public services; Economic rights and empowerment; Gender equality and social inclusion; Improved accountability and transparency; Free and peaceful elections. This was contained in the report of the evaluation of the STAR-Ghana 2 programme (2015-2020) commissioned by Christian Aid to learn from the experience and point to useful directions for the STAR-Ghana Foundation in the future.
Themes of Change
What Changed
The evaluation noted that nearly two thirds (77 out of 113) of the outcomes were in Policies and Practices. Policy changes included new laws at national or district level, such as passage of the Land Bill or the Right to Information Bill, or new administrative regulations or procedures that had direct effects on people’s lives, such as inclusion of women in District Assembly decision-making processes. The outcomes were evenly divided between national and local level. While the national level outcomes were of course significant because they set frameworks for the entire country, many local level changes were in fact systems changes as well, such as District by-laws affecting women or people with disabilities. The programme and its Grant Partners used a wide variety of tactics to achieve these results. The most common approaches were meetings with duty bearers, alliance building, training and awareness raising, and engagement with the media. Most outcomes were the product of multiple tactics used by several stakeholders, and most required considerable time to come to fruition. Pathways to change for some of the more difficult results – such as passage of the Land Act, or increased funding for mental health – were actually quite complex, and did not follow any linear route to success. The diagram below shows the most impactful stakeholders, their contributions and outcomes at a glance.
These changes in Policy and Practice were split nearly evenly between the national and local level – 49% were national, 47% were local, with the remaining 4% at the regional level. It could be argued that national level changes were more important than local, since they set a framework for the whole country and affected far more people. While we found that to be largely true, many of the local level changes were also in fact systems changes. Local level changes such as new district by-laws were more likely to have a direct and more immediate effect on people’s lives than national polices, that would take a long time to filter down to the local level.
Sustainability/Ongoing Impact
STAR-Ghana Foundation - The programme also created the STAR-Ghana Foundation, a 100% Ghanaian organisation that will carry the work forward now that the programme has ended. The Foundation is an experienced civil society support organisation which uses a strategy of deep engagement with Grant Partners to build capacity, strengthen networks, and make a sustained impact. Its profound knowledge of the work of civil society in Ghana for citizen influencing that advances democracy, accountability, and social inclusion make it an ideal partner for funders and partners who share those goals. This is the Unique Selling Point of the Foundation
Recommendations
- Expand the scope of engagement to non-traditional and informal Civil Society Organisations to expand the boundaries of inclusion and support citizen-led initiatives. Adapt partner engagement, grantmaking practices, and technical assistance to better support a movement building approach: adaptive management, built-in flexibility in grant agreements, technical support more oriented to strategy, tactics, and relationships than to compliance.
- Adapt the monitoring, evaluation, and learning system to track complex social change events: methods such as outcome journals and Most Significant Change can work, especially if they are done on an ongoing basis, and not generated externally after long periods of time have passed. The system needs to balance learning with demands on time for staff and Grant Partners.
- Revisit the strategy of Convening, Catalysing, Coordinating, and Learning to retain its key values while operating on reduced budgets. Adaptations might include doing fewer Grant Partner visits after original trust is established, and use of external auditors and organisational development specialists built into grant budgets. Staff have sufficient experience to work out how to retain the core functions with reduced resources.
- STAR-Ghana Foundation makes grants to numerous Civil Society Organisations small and large, local and national, across the country. Going forward STAR Ghana should develop a strategy and criteria for identifying and growing citizens organisations which are playing a catalytic role for citizens in specific selected issues and places.
- Publicize the legacy documents that document the programme’s achievements on social inclusion, Political Economy Analysis, learning and related documents both in Ghana and abroad. Develop accessible presentations of them and seek out as many opportunities to share the work as possible.
- Founding donors should continue to use relationships with other donors to pave the way for Foundation staff to approach new donors for at least the next two years.
About STAR-Ghana 2 Programme
The STAR-Ghana 2 programme was a five year (2016-2020), £21.1 million programme funded by the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), and the European Union. It was managed by a consortium led by Christian Aid. The programme’s ultimate objective was to contribute to a well-informed and active civil society, able to contribute to transformational change around key challenges of poverty, inequality, and inclusion for all citizens.
Download the full report to read more about the evaluation
Download the annexes for more impact stories from the evaluation
The Journey of YEfL Youth Parliament so far
The Youth Parliament (YP) Project was started by Saboba Youth and was later adopted by Youth Empowerment for Life and implemented in five districts in Northern Region, namely: Saboba, Sagnarigu, Yendi, Nanumba North and South Districts. The project main goal was to ensure that there were increased effective youth and gender inclusiveness in local governing processes in the project districts.
In order to achieve this important goal, the youth parliament and community journalists concept was adopted. The model is such that, YP debate upon issues of concern in the various communities raised by the community journalists (CJ) and engage with the appropriate duty bearers for those issues to see lasting solutions.
This project has over the past one and half years imparted positively on the individual lives of youth parliamentarians as well as community journalists and made a lot of major strides and benchmarks in the development of communities in the various districts ranging from governance, education, health, and sanitation, youth empowerment, agriculture just to mention but a few.
The Nanumba North Youth Parliament won the third-placed position of the Sanitation Challenge for Ghana (SC4Gh) hosted by the Ministry for Sanitation and Water Resources, Ghana. For their award, they received thirty-five thousand (35,000) US dollars in cash prize. This cash prize is to be used in the implementation of activities aimed at tackling the sanitation challenges in their communities.
In the individual lives of both parliamentarians and community journalists, they have expressed a lot of significant change. The training received has increased their capacity in terms of public speaking, engaging with people in high-level positions and those who matter in society and linking them to places and people they never knew. These life-changing experiences have fueled their desire to lead their people. Last year (2019) three youth parliamentarians filed to be elected as Assembly members to represent their respective electoral areas.
In his opening statement, Rauf shared his reason for contesting and stated, “My reason to contest this year is simple, I want to help my people”. He went on to highlight the activities that through his work with the Nanumba Youth Parliament has supported the development of the municipality. His manifesto…
“My name is Abdul Rauf, a youth parliamentarian and an aspirant for Dangbe electoral area. As a youth advocate and aspirant for Dangbe electoral area, I am concerned about the development of my community in Water and Sanitation, Education, Health and so on. I would work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in the little way that I can. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Without a clean environment, the community is exposed to unlimited danger. I would collaborate with relevant stakeholders to advocate on the need for households to construct latrines. Some communities within Dangbe electoral area do not have access to electricity. When elected as the Assembly member, I would work collaboratively with the Assembly and Member of Parliament to ensure that there is an extension of electricity in the electoral area. Water they say is life. Clean and Safe Water is important for a healthy living. I would work towards improving the quality of drinking water through Community Water and other agencies by drilling of boreholes and wells."
"Unemployment is a major issue in Dangbe. Most Young men and women are unemployed. When elected as the Assembly member, I would work closely with the District Assembly in providing entrepreneurial skills to young persons in the electoral area as well as developing a small grants/loan system to enable these young person’s establish Start-ups. I would also ensure that Village Savings and Loans (VSLA) groups are formed for these young people with Start-ups to enable them to save and repay the grants. Education is the key to a society’s development. The disparity in Male and Female education is high here in Dangbe. When elected, I would passionately work with Cama to support young females to access quality education. `"If you educate a girl, you educate the whole nation."’
Yakubu Abdul-Rauf was number one (1) on the ballot paper on the day of the election. Unfortunately, at the end of vote count he lost his bid for the assembly position. However, as much as this loss was painful to him, it has not deterred him from supporting in the development of his community but has rather enforced his zeal to work harder through the Youth Parliament.
