ActionAid Ghana, your Charity of Choice, is 25 years old. Since 1990 when we started as a small country programme in Sapelgain the Upper East Region, ActionAid Ghana has extended into other regions in a 25 year development journey that has transformed lives and inspired change. Today, ActionAid Ghana works with more than Two Million people in six out of the ten regions of Ghana. These are Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Volta, BrongAhafo and Greater Accra regions.
On the occasion of our 25th Anniversary celebrations,where we would also launch our Country Strategy Paper V, we are delighted to share our development story, which has become possible because of the support of our partners, collaborating government ministries,INGOs, CSOs, community members, traditional institutions and the media. Our new Country Strategy Paper comes under the name ‘Increasing Possibilities, Claiming Rights’. It will drive ActionAid Ghana’s pro-poor interventions for five years.
Why We are Different
ActionAid Ghana is an Affiliate of ActionAid, an international anti-poverty development agency working in over 46 countries to promote human rights for all and defeat poverty and injustice in excluded and marginalised communities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and in disadvantaged and deprived communities around the world.
We take sides with the poor and work together to build their power within, facilitating change through community-led local structures and human-rights driven interventions to inspire meaningful development. We believe there is power in people.
How we make change Happen
Based on our Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA), we believe development will happen through the strategic and non-discriminatory use of resources, seeking to build the power within people to lead their own development. With HRBA, people are empowered to analyse their obligations, inequalities and vulnerabilities and work towards their own development.
ActionAid Ghana (AAG) believes that we can increase people’s possibilities to claim their rights when they are supported to build active constituencies through strategic alliances, which would enable them to contest and claim their rights. We believe in providing credible alternatives to the popular development paradigm.
Development does not only manifest in impressive infrastructure or financial sufficiency; development happens when people’s rights are protected, promoted and fulfilled.
Our Development Campaigns/Advocacy
- Basic Education and Promoting Rights in school
- Women Empowerment,Affirmative Action
- Domestic Violence and Gender Discrimination
- Food Security and Climate Change
- Local Governance, Women leadership
- Sustainable Livelihoods Projects.
- Tax Justice and Investments incentives
- Women’s Unpaid Care work
Our Unique Innovations
1. Young Female Parliament – A training platform to equip and resource young women with practical leadership skills for personal and professional development.
2. Rural Education Volunteers – A bridge teacher training community development concept that develops the teaching capacities of SHS graduates to fill vacant teaching positions in rural communities while supplementing GES teacher supply inadequacies.
3. Community-Based Anti-Violence Teams – Community volunteers trained in domestic violence laws and crime reporting procedures to facilitate the work of the police and promote community development.
4. Model Girls’ and Boy’s Camps – Educational camps for basic school girls from deprived communities to learn and share about fundamental rights in education and other leadershipprogrammes.
5. Global Platform – A youth-focused professional knowledge hub delivering tailor-made and practical training solutions to young people and other professionals to impact their communities and organisations.
Defining Moments and Winning Ways
In October last year, ActionAid Ghana was adjudged the Not-for-Profit Organisation of the Year 2013 by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Ghana. The prestigious award was in recognition ofour “excellence in the strategic marketing” of innovations and interventions towards poverty eradication and promotion of human rights in Ghana.
After the publication of an AAG-sponsored research, which revealed the loss of $1.2Billion every year to harmful tax incentives in Ghana, our Tax Justice Campaign has gained lots of interest from the media, public institutions and the business community. AAG is presently collaborating with Parliamentary Committees on Finance, Tourism, Trade and Industry, to work out a national response to our tax imbalances.
AAG and partners are also working hard to speed up the re-integration of women accused of witchcraft and placed in camps in the Northern Region. On 10th December, 2014, AAG collaborated with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to organisea national conference onwitchcraft accusations to decide on a workable national strategy and treatment of witchcraft accusations and other human rights.
Following the conference, 55 alleged witches, including 5 inmates from the Bonyasiwitch camp, were reintegratedinto their communities on 15th December, 2014. The Bonyasi camp was subsequently closed down by the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protectionin a symbolic ceremony at Bonyasi, Central Gonja. It is our expectation that all the women in the remaining fivecamps would bereintegrated soon.
We are also proud of the advocacy initiatives we are advancing in respect of the finalisationof the Legislative Instrument (LI) of the Domestic Violence Act (DV Act). We are pushing this agenda because the women of this country need the full protection of the law which is not happening because the LI has not been passed.
On women’s access to land and other productive resources, AAG has been working assiduously with communities in the Upper West and Upper East regions, and also in BrongAhafo, to ensure that women have secured access to land through legal tenancies. With this intervention, women would be assured of not losing their lands and would have the freedom to work hard to provide for their families.
ActionAid is one of the first organisations to have started Girls’ Camps in Ghana. Our model hasbeen adopted by the government because it is more progressive and prepares girls better to be confident and assertive.Our last national camp attracted a galaxy of accomplished women role models, including the 2nd Lady of the Republic of Ghana, Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur. Now in its 14th year, the camp innovation has been adopted and practiced by many institutions and other NGOs.
As a development agency, we work towards providing humanitarian and relief services during emergencies and disasters. In solidarity with the victims and survivors of the June 3rd disaster in Accra, AAGdonated relief items worth GH500,000 to residents of 7 affected districts. These are Ayawaso West, Okaikwei South, Ga West, Ga East, La Nkwatanang, Ga South, Ablekuma South. In September 2014, we donated medical supplies to the Korle Bu and La Polyclinics in Accra, and to hospitals in the Upper East region towards national efforts to fight cholera and prevent Ebola.
There is so much we can do together. If you would like to support ActionAid Ghana to continue changing lives in more communities, pleasedonate to:ActionAid Ghana FundraisingAccount No.: 0100100582100, Standard Chartered Bank, High Street Branch, Accra, Ghana
ActionAid Ghana: CIMG Not-for-Profit Organisation of the Year – 2013
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