The project will aid with capacity development, direct grant funding and collective advocacy activities.

Funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC), the project which is dubbed, Renewed Women’s Voices and Leadership Ghana (RWVLG), would strengthen the organisational capacity, influence, and sustain women’s rights groups, youth-led networks, organisations of persons living with disabilities, informal collectives and other allied actors working to drive gender equality.

It is a six-year project being implemented by Plan International Ghana in close partnership with Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) and Adolescents Network on Population and Development (AfriYAN) Ghana.

The project outcomes are to increase enjoyment of human rights by women and girls in all their diversity and the advancement of gender equality in Ghana; enhance organisational sustainability of local WROs, YLOs and marginalised groups to deliver their feminist and gender equality mandates and also increase effectiveness of women’s rights platforms, networks and alliances to affect policy, legal and social change.

The project was launched by the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOGCSP), Dr Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, on the theme, ““Renewed Voices, Stronger Movements: Powering Ghana’s Gender Equality.” 

Phase

The Country Director of Plan International Ghana, Constant Tchona, said the RWVLG project represented the next phase of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) launched in 2017 to promote gender equality and strengthen the rights of women and girls globally.

He said the earlier Women’s Voice and Leadership (WVL) initiative, which was one of FIAP’s flagship programmes, laid a strong foundation of impact and learning, and as such RWVLG would build directly on that legacy.

In this renewed phase, he explained, they were adopting a fully feminist, inclusive and movement-centred approach.

Mr Tchona said RWVLG had been intentionally designed to support these efforts by strengthening leadership, enhancing advocacy capacity, and create safe, inclusive spaces for collective action, adding that importantly, they aimed to nurture the next generation of young feminist leaders who were already redefining the future of gender equality in Ghana.

The Head of Cooperation, Development Programme of the Canadian High Commission in Ghana, Francoise Nduwimana, expressed joy in the achievements so far in empowering women and called for more to be empowered and for an inclusive society so that Ghana would be a place where everybody was equal and enjoyed the same rights

A joint statement read by a representative each of NETRIGHT and AfriYAN reaffirmed their shared commitment to amplify the voices of women, youth and marginalised groups in national development processes; advocate gender-transformative policies and practices that protect rights, expand opportunities and dismantle systemic inequalities as well as ensure sustainability and resilience of youth led and WROs, whose work remained at the forefront of social justice in Ghana.