Plan International Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organization working to promote child rights and ensure women empowerment, has started a five-year advocacy program aimed at getting various stakeholders together to improve the welfare of women and children in the country.
The project will ensure that children get the needed support and opportunities to enhance growth and advancement.
Speaking at a forum to officially launch the Girls Advocacy Alliance, the Programs support manager at Plan International Ghana, Rose Baio Silo, said it will help to further eliminate gender based violence and abuses among girls and women.
“In the past, we were focusing on general issues; but now we will be focusing more on girls. We have realized that girls are still behind and we need them on board if we want to bring about the development. This is the direction we want to go now. In the past we were doing more on need base, the people need this and we go in to help, but we have seen that we cannot continue doing that. We have people who keep collecting taxes and are supposed to provide services and if they are not doing it we have to make sure that the systems that have also been put in place force them to do it. That is what our new strategy aims to do now.”
On his part, the Executive Secretary for the Defense for Children International Ghana, Dr. George Oppong Appiah-Adjei Ampong, said although the program was facing certain challenges, they are optimistic with support from the various stakeholders, the desired outcome will be achieved.
“Advocacy comes with change, and we are talking about practices that the people are used to. These are norms, traditions, behaviors and attitudes, so we know we have a long way to go as a country.”
“We have knowledge gap, resource gap and the third is the policy gap. We need to solve all these issues. We need resources to effect the change, knowledge for the people, we need to accept the change and fix the policies that have fragmented and are causing the various controversies. Once all these have been sorted out, we are optimistic some development and progress will be made.”
The Girl Advocacy Alliance will deal with child marriage, commercial sexual exploitation of children, and general abuse of girls in the homes.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
