The Star Ghana Foundation (SGF) organised its third, annual Strategic Learning Event, which brought civil society organisations together to share experiences and ideas about what is happening in the third sector. The event, tagged ‘Celebrating Success: Resourcing Active Citizenship for the Future’, focused on the success stories and the challenges of civil society organisations. It was expected that those in attendance would recalibrate their approaches, based on the knowledge shared at the event, in order to become more effective in their work.
The Executive Director of SGF, Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, said, ‘We need citizen groups to continue [raising] the issues of concern in order to get the attention of politicians, by way of hammering out their policy positions, which will go a long way [to benefit the citizenry]’. He also said that the accountability of civil society organisations, which has posed a problem, needs to be tackled so as to win the trust of citizens and their support for the work of civil society organisations. ‘Talking about the [funding, it] is important for some specific activities but when it is put at the centre, we risk destroying the vitality of [whatever makes] citizens movement so effective’, Amidu said.
The co-founder of Lead Afrique International, Michael Ohene-Effah, emphasised the need for civil society organisations to address the issue of system strengthening for their organisations. He said that system strengthening is what makes the difference between a corporate entity and a couple of individuals just working together. Ohene-Effah advised civil society organisations to make it easy to give them donations by activating some of the various payment platforms that have become available. He also added that donors need to offer flexible funding that can respond to issues quickly.
In his own statement, the Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, said that without civil society’s active pressure on political leaders, holding the feet of political leaders leaders to the fire, politicians will not do the right things.
Source: Modern Ghana
Photo source: International Growth Centre
