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U.S. Embassy honours Ms Lydia Sasu, other women
The Executive Director of Development Action Association (DAA), Ms Lydia Sasu, has been awarded the United States (US) Embassy’s 2020 ‘Woman of Courage’ Award.
The award recognises women who show exceptional courage and leadership in advocating human rights, women’s equality, social progress, often at great personal risk and sacrifice.
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Each year, the United States (US) diplomatic missions overseas nominate only one woman of courage from their respective host countries.
In a remark, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy, Mr Christopher J. Lamora, said Ms Sasu was noted for championing the rights of women farmers for decades.
She formed one of the country’s leading grassroots federations of women farmers, the DAA (Noyaa Kpee in the Ga language) that operates in 65 communities along Ghana’s coast to strengthen food security among rural women, many of whom lack formal education.
Ms Sasu’s achievements
Over the years, he said the DAA, led by Ms Sasu, forged an alliance with the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development (MOFAD), the Fisheries Commission, traditional leaders and female oyster pickers to apply co-management techniques that culminated in a five-month closed season for the Densu coastal oyster fishery last year.
This closed season provided an opportunity for fish stock to be replenished so fishers can continue to make their livelihoods from the ocean.
The initiative’s success required communication, cooperation and courage. Educating communities on the purpose behind the closure and convincing them on the need to work together to come through the period stronger was no small feat.
Through the strength of the coalition that she built, and her leadership and courage, Ms Sasu ensured that oyster farmers effectively enforced the ban on harvesting in their own communities and voluntarily extended it for a second consecutive year.
As a result, today, the women oyster harvesters report significantly larger harvests and sales revenues thanks to the co-management techniques that Ms Sasu and DAA pioneered. The Densu example is a model for extending the closed season to all coastal fisheries, and one that we hope is scaled up in the years to come.
Mr Lamora noted the successful initiative demonstrated how civil society could work hand-in-hand with the government to self-regulate their communities.
“It proved that shared responsibility for decision-making among the government, citizens and stakeholders can be more effective than a top-down approach. It also underscored the tremendous importance of engaging women in such undertakings,” he said.
The wise women
Meanwhile, three other women, namely, Ms Felicia Boakye-Yiadom, Ms Cynthia Bosumtwi-Sam and Dr Evelyn Oduro, affectionately referred to as the “Three Wise Women” from the Ministry of Education have also received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice.
For 12 years, the US Embassy has recognised one or more Ghanaians who in the same spirit as Dr Martin Luther King Jr. have promoted social justice, peace and human rights.
As the Executive Secretaries of three key Ministry of Education agencies — the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), the National Inspectorate Board (NIB) and the National Teaching Council (NTC), these women have been instrumental in the ministry’s success in partnering and collaborating with development partners, including USAID, non-governmental organisations, and civil society organisations to mobilise technical and financial support to improve the quality of education for Ghana’s children.
USAID collaborated with the “Three Wise Women” as part of its Partnership for Education: Learning activity.
Together, USAID and Ms Boakye-Yiadom, Ms Bosumtwi-Sam and Dr Oduro co-created and jointly managed a phonics-based early grade reading programme across Ghana’s 11 official national languages of instruction.
Through their stellar efforts over the last five years, the Learning activity trained 38,000 education personnel in over 7,200 schools across 100 districts and distributed 3.2 million grade-level teaching and learning materials to schools. In 2018, an independent external impact evaluation showed substantial and significant improvements in students’ reading achievement as a result of these efforts.
These women accomplished incredible feats and became trailblazers for education reform in Ghana. They effectively used the pedagogy of the Learning activity to guide the development of an improved national primary school curriculum that emphasises the importance of reading, writing and arithmetic.
They also rolled out Ghana’s first teacher licensure examination and the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates on phones and tablets for collecting real-time data by school inspectors.