ActionAid Ghana has launched the Young Urban Women Movement (YUWM) in the Upper West Region to empower women in the area.
Development Diaries reports that the project is designed to cover women in the Sissala East and Jirapa municipalities and the Lambussie District.
Young women from the Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, and the Dr Hilla Limann Technical University (DHLTU) are also targets.
The project, it is understood, seeks to empower women to advocate better opportunities and rights in the areas of sexual and gender-based violence (GBV), unpaid care work, and decent work.
Data from the Accra Regional Office of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) shows that 31.9 percent of Ghanaian women have faced at least one form of domestic violence.
Also, women and girls aged ten and above spend 14.4 percent of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared to 3.5 percent spent by men.
‘ActionAid Ghana will focus its attention on the YUWM in the Upper West Region and provide them with the needed support to ensure it grows in capacity and numbers to push the agenda of self-integrity, unpaid care work and economic security in line with the organisation’s aim of eliminating poverty’, Head of Programmes at ActionAid Ghana, Justin Bayor, said.
Bayor said that the movement has been working with some 6,500 women between the ages of 15 and 35 across Northern, Volta, Upper East, Eastern and Bono Regions of the country to promote the dignity of women.
Photo source: Scottgunn
