The Africa Centre for Human Rights and Sustainable Development (AfCHuRSD), a gender-sensitive Non-governmental Organization, has organized a workshop to build the capacity of community-level influencers (women) to advocate for women’s participation in leadership positions. The capacity-building workshop was organized on Feb. 2, 2025, at Nadowli in the Upper West Region (UW/R).
The workshop aims to appeal to community-level influencers to lead the advocacy for women’s participation in leadership roles at all levels of society.
The workshop brought together some traditional Chiefs and Leaders, Assembly Members, Teachers and the media from the Nadowli-Kaleo, Jirapa, Daffiama-Bussie-Issa and Wa West Districts.
Speaking at the event, Madam Bernice Naah, the Executive Director of AfCHuRSD, appealed to the influencers to lead the advocacy to encourage more women to contest for leadership positions in their communities.
Madam Bernice took the opportunity to take participants through the Affirmative Action and Gender Equity Act, 2024 (Act 1121) and its importance to the achievement of gender equity. She encouraged women to develop themselves academically to acquire the rights and skills to compete with their male counterparts for leadership positions.
In her presentation, she observed that only 8 women out of 165 people applied for the District Chief Executive positions in the region, which was not encouraging and urged more women to show interest in such roles.
“You need to identify capable women who will be interested in leading but will put up themselves for either political appointment, elections, and other roles, motivate and encourage them to go in for such roles”, Madam Naah said.
Professor Robert Yennah, the Chairperson of Equity, Opportunities and Development Fund (EODF) in Action urged women and girls to be confident and bold to lead and not to relinquish their rightful positions to men for any reason.
Madam Janet Kpan, the Upper West Regional Gender Officer at the Ghana Education Service, also took the participants through leadership qualities regarding women and girls. “As a woman, you must be proactive, be supportive to get the backing of other women and you must be a problem solver as a leader”, she explained.
The participants developed action plans to champion the project’s agenda in their communities.
Some women in leadership positions (Assembly Women) and former aspirants took turns to share their experiences in contesting for leadership positions. Key issues that they were confronted with were the hostilities they received from the male contestants because they are females (women)
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The workshop is an activity under the project theme: Girls & Women Economic Empowerment and Leadership (GWEEL) project in partnership with Equity, Opportunities and Development Fund (EODF) In Action. It is to promote equal rights for women and girls (Gender equality) in Ghana through advocacy for affirmative Action, inclusiveness and sustainable livelihood for women. The GWEEL project is supported by funds from the Equal Opportunity Fund in Ghana by the Netherlands Embassy.