Tutors build capacities to incorporate gender into public health education
A three-day training for tutors of three public health institutions on gender incorporation into public health education, has ended in Accra.
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The institutions are the Ho, Tamale and Korle Bu schools of hygiene.
The training was organised by the Hope for Future Generations (HFFG), a gender-based advocacy centre and the Maastricht University, with support from The Netherlands Government, through The Netherlands University Foundation for International Cooperation (NUFFIC), which is the country’s organisation for international cooperation in higher education. It was aimed at sensitising the tutors to the need to include gender concerns in public health education, especially in the areas of water and sanitation issues.
Four-year project
The training formed part of a four-year project which started in 2014 with a funding capacity of 200,000 Euros.
It was facilitated by the Netherlands Initiative for Capacity development in Higher Education (NICHE), a Netherlands-funded Development cooperation programme, and the Centre for the Innovation of Education and Training (CINOP) Global, the Dutch Centre of Expertise on Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) which provided professional services to the design and development of vocational education and training.
Purpose of training
Briefing the media at the end of the training, the NICHE project Coordinator in Ghana, Mr Henry Adepa, said the overall goal of the project was geared towards incorporating gender into the curriculum of the three schools of hygiene.
As part of the project, he said the three institutions had also been provided with books and laboratory equipment.
Mr Adepa, who is also the Principal of the Korle Bu School of Hygiene, said four tutors each from the three institutions had benefited from summer courses in The Netherlands while five others were currently on scholarship studying for their Master’s degrees in various universities in Ghana.
A beneficiary of the training, Ms Amina Mohammed, a tutor from the Tamale School of Hygiene, said the training had helped her to appreciate the need to incorporate gender concerns into their curriculums.
A Senior Consultant of CINOP Global, Ms Josee Hoogervorst, said CINOP in all of its projects, ensured that gender concerns were incorporated into all activities.
Local component
The Executive Director of the HFFG, Mrs Cecilia Senoo, said her organisation’s role in the project was to ensure that gender concerns were integrated with water and sanitation issues.
According to her, the schools of hygiene in the country had major roles to play in the communities in the improvement of water and sanitation-related issues.
However, she said, these institutions, after careful research, had been found to have gender gaps in providing training for water and sanitation officers for the communities.
Mrs Senoo said as part of the training, gender focal persons would be appointed in the three institutions, as well as develop gender policies, which would be drawn from the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) policies for the institutions.
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