Three civil society organisations (CSOs), West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) and the Wilde Ganzen Foundation and the Change the Game Academy, have held a skills perfection training on advocacy for community-based organisations (CBOs) in Ghana.

The organisers stated that CBOs have a vantage from which they can influence policies in the country. However, they noted that that strategic positioning has not always been matched by the skills to demand change and influence policies from the grassroots and hence the training.

The Programme Officer for the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Unit at WACSI, Gervin Chanase, said, ‘A lot of grassroots organisations have inadequate capacity or skills to be able to engage duty bearers at the local level. With this training, we want to move [CBOs] away from just being service providers to having the ability and capacity to empower right holders, to be able to realise their rights from duty bearers’.

The training also addressed issues related to human rights, legal frameworks and the role of social media in the work of CBOs. Several participants said that the training opened their eyes to, among other things, approaching fundraising by framing the needs of their communities in terms of human rights and existing national laws and international  treaties. They said that the training had also strengthened their understanding of community mobilisation, especially with respect to increasing the visibility of their work through social media.

Chanase also said, ‘The training, based on both theoretical and practical sessions, allowed participants to acquire a lot of skills such as how to communicate, to pitch ideas, to advocate, to negotiate, to identify allies and opponents, how to analyse and dissect problems and how to develop solutions that match their needs’.

Source: WACSI

Photo source: WACSI