Journalists receive orientation on Dutch partnership programme
Fifteen selected journalists have received orientation on a programme initiated by the Dutch Development Organisation (SNV) dubbed the Voice for Change (V4C) partnership.
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The programme, which spans five years (2016 – 2020), is aimed at empowering civil society organisations (CSOs) to have a greater voice as advocates and effectively serve the interests of the people they represent.
It is also intended to influence agenda setting and policy creation by stimulating collaboration among CSOs, the government, the private sector and other relevant stakeholders and also enhance government and private sector accountability by ensuring that they fulfil actions and promises made.
Addressing the journalists at an orientation workshop at Dodowa in the Shai Osudoku District in the Greater Accra Region, the Country Programme Coordinator of SNV, Mr Eric Banye, said the V4C was a purely non-political developmental evidence-based advocacy programme, which did not directly involve infrastructure development.
V4C programme
The programme, which was launched in 2015, is being funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS) to the tune of about €35 million and has SNV as the implementer.
Ghana is one of six countries in the world running the programme. The other countries are Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Kenya, Honduras and Indonesia.
Briefing the media on the programme, Mr Banye said it comprised three strategic pillars: capacity development, evidence creation and dissemination, as well as evidence-based advocacy.
Its focus areas are also food and nutrition security, resilience, renewable energy, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), with close attention to gender interests and climate change.
Under food and nutrition security, the programme’s attention is on improving sustainable nutrition for all and preventing post-harvest losses, while in WASH, the focus is on increasing access, affordability and equity to sustainable sanitation and hygiene.
The renewable sector also focuses on access to clean cooking and to off-grid electrification.
The three main strategies employed by the programme are strengthening the capacities of CSOs, creating evidence and disseminating and providing support for advocacy plans and activities of CSOs.
Partners in the programme are the DGIS, Embassies of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and CSOs in the six project countries.
According to Mr Banye, the Ghana programme was working with 12 CSOs in 24 districts in six regions across the country, which were selected through competitive tendering, such as the Peasant Farmers Association and the Ghana Trade and Livelihood Coalition.
He told the journalists that the teams were geographically clustered, citing that those working on food and nutrition were concentrated in the three northern regions while issues on WASH were concentrated in the Greater Accra, Western as well as the northern regions.
He said the V4C partnership had been developed because “the needy lack the voice on issues and also lack representation in decision making process, while there is the lack of commitment to implement existing by-laws, policies, regulations and frameworks.
Local ownership
During discussions, the journalists agreed that most interventions in communities were not successful because the community members were not involved in their execution so they were not locally owned.
Mr Banye also lamented that although the names of districts had been effectively decentralised, the structures were not.
The facilitator of the orientation workshop, Mr Charles Yao Mawusi of Trans Media Network (TWN) said the programme was organised to enable journalists to understand the issues and be able to adequately influence policy direction and behavioural change.
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