Some selected women groups from five communities in the Bolgatanga East District of the Upper East Region have received livelihood empowerment training to venture into income generating businesses.

The women from the Yarigabisi, Dulugu, Gambibgo, Poligu and Kumbosgo communities were trained in the production of liquid and solid soap, and pastries.

It is part of the implementation of a one-year project dubbed "Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Girls (EROP) by the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) with funding support from the Dutch Embassy in Ghana.

The aim of the project is to empower women economically to become financially independent to reduce poverty and help them to contribute to the upkeep of their various families.

Ms Martha Atule, the Field Officer for the EROP project explained that the project sought to contribute to end Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in the beneficiary communities.

The Field Officer explained that due to the vulnerability of women and girls, they continued to suffer violence in various forms at home and communities and the situation affected their growth and development.

She said during a sensitization forum on SGBV, it was revealed that most of the women did not have any economic venture and relied solely on their husbands for every need and that bred conflicts among families.

Ms Atule said apart from the project training and equipping community volunteers to continue to educate the women and members of the communities on how to contribute to end SGBV, it decided to empower them economically with the skills training to be able to support their families financially.

This, she believed, would relieve the burden placed on their husbands and contribute to end the menace of SGBV.

"When the opportunity comes, we will move to training the women on a different skill and we hope that these women would put this into practice and will end up putting something on the table for them and prevent them from relying solely on the men," she added.

This, according to Ms Atule, would contribute to attaining gender parity and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially goal five which put emphasis on achieving gender equality by 2030.

The beneficiary women expressed gratitude to PPAG for facilitating the livelihood skills training and noted that it would make them financially independent.

Ms Beatrice Adinguu, a beneficiary from the Dulugu community, said most of the women engaged in rain-fed subsistence farming and were often idle during the dry season and added that the skills acquired would enable her engage in a profitable venture to complement the provision of the family.

Ms Nancy Atomzoya, another participant from the Gambibgo community said the knowledge learnt would be shared with her colleagues to ensure maximum impact.