ABAK FOUNDATION GHANA has held a Learn and Share Festival to assess the impact of the project dubbed ‘Strengthening Civil Society Representation of Women with Disabilities in Ghana’ at Konongo/Odumasi in the Asante Akyem Central Municipality of the Ashanti region.
Funded by the European Union in Ghana, the two-year project, which started in May 2924 is being implemented by ABAK Foundation Ghana together with Sightsavers Ireland and the Women with Disability Development and Advocacy Organization (WODAO) to build the capacity of organizations working to promote disability rights of women with disabilities at the grassroots level.
ABAK Foundation is a national level NGO which focuses mainly on advancing the rights and welfare of persons, women in the reproductive age bracket, children and marginalized groups through advocacy, partnerships and initiatives targeted at empowerment to building an inclusive society.
Mr. David Agyemang, Country Director for Sightsavers, commended ABAK Foundation for being a dependable organization having always achieved its targets. He said Sightsavers and the sponsors appreciate ABAK Foundation for their good work in the implementation of the project.
He said the ‘Learn and Share’ event is significant because it affords the major stakeholders to understand clearly and assess what the project have been able to achieve, particularly its impact or change on the downstream partners and ABAK Foundation.
The Country Director explained that Sightsavers is an international NGO, which operates in more than 30 countries in Africa and Asia and focuses on promoting the rights of persons with disabilities and also fight against avoidable blindness.
Established in Ghana since 1950, Mr Agyemang said Sightsavers had supported government to distribute the ivermectin drug, which had protected more than five million Ghanaians from river blindness. It had also supported to train medical doctors in hydrocelectomy or hydrocele surgeries – a surgical operation to remove fluid build-up from the scrotum surrounding the testicles across the country.
He said Sightsavers also trained young persons with disabilities in employable and entrepreneurship skills and built capacity of civil society organizations. Significant among the achievements were the elimination of trachoma from Ghana in 2018, which freed some 2.8 million people from blindness, and also supported the Ghana Health Service to establish five eye clinics in the Eastern region, among others.
Mr. Phillip Duah, the Executive Director of ABAK Foundation Ghana explained that the ‘Learn and Share’ festival was to climax the implementation of a two-year EU funded project, which is being implemented by ABAK Foundation Ghana, Sightsavers Ireland and WODAO in the Volta Region, basically to strengthen the capacity of local based organizations.
He said ABAK had been replicated in 20 districts across four regions in Ghana and had trained 23 downstream organizations as a backup to the capacity of ABAK to be more efficient and also carry out grassroots training activities for the local based organizations.
Mr. Duah explained that ABAK had so far trained about 339 civil society workers, equipping them to carry out with activities, which related to disability inclusion in their respective localities because it was only when CSOs are strengthened that they would be able to carry out interventions that directly benefit persons with disability especially women.
The Executive Director said the Learn and Share festival has brought together beneficiaries from across the four regions comprising traditional, religious and community leaders to be part of the conversation concerning the inclusion of women with disability, and how to sustain the success chalked beyond the EU funding as CSOs.
The Board Chairperson of ABAK, Madam Jessica Ackon-Eghan , in a welcome address disclosed that a total of 409 downstream partner staff and members including women with disabilities directly benefitted from the capacity building and training in advocacy, safeguarding, disability inclusion, gender mainstreaming and climate change, among others. She emphasized that “ABAK and WODAO have increased knowledge about gender equality and the rights of people with disabilities and thus gained the knowledge and skills to advocate for those rights.”
From Thomas Agbenyegah Adzey, Konongo
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