STAR-Ghana Foundation is excited to announce our poetry contest focused on the critical theme of “Climate Change”.
This is in collaboration with Comic Relief, Tilitonse Foundation (Malawi), Zambian Governance Foundation and the West Africa Civil Society Institute.
Kindly find the details through this link: - https://www.comicrelief.com/project-dreamworld/
https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/621-first-time-writers-lifelong-poets-truth-tellers
STAR-Ghana Foundation is on the lookout for a talented poetry contest consultant to join our team and help bring the magic of words to life!
If you ever wanted to understand the expression “shift the power” and ‘red nose day” the place to be was the Shift the Power (#StP) learning and convening event in Accra, from 9th-12th October, where a search for the definition of #StP and ‘Red Nose Day’ unpacked the phrases.
STAR-Ghana Foundation has held a learning session on safeguarding for twenty (20) catalyst fund partners under the Civil Society Strengthening Programme Shift The Power (CSSP-#StP).
The two-day session, from Wednesday, 4th October to Thursday, 5th October 2023 took place at Aburi, in the Akuapem South District of the Eastern Region and comprised presentations, group work and the drafting of policies.
STAR-Ghana Foundation's Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, Executive Director, has been inducted into the Prestigious Northern Sector Youth & Mentors Achievers’ Awards Hall of Fame as a 'Special Star Achiever'.
He was inducted during an engagement with some civil society organisations (CSOs) in Tamale in the Northern region.
The engagement formed part of activities to mark the 5th anniversary of STAR-Ghana Foundation, a national centre for promoting active citizenship and local philanthropy for sustainable development.
The Foundation was set up as part of efforts to find a space, and a mechanism that will enable a better coordination of development efforts, and to ask the fundamental questions about the state of affairs.
Again, it was to find a space that will help hold the hands of very young organisations and support them to grow to take their places.
read more: https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/605-ibrahim-tanko-amidu-inducted-special-star-achiever
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Development Studies (UDS), Prof. Seidu Al-Hasaan, has said that no persons should be excluded in the quest to achieve sustainable development because of their vulnerability.
He said that the vulnerable such as persons with disabilities, the aged, women, and children among others, all form part of the society and so, it was important to mobilise all of them to be part of the development process.
“We must recognise that our own society, country, is vulnerable because it is exposed to so many risks such as economic crisis, global wars, internal wranglings and conflicts. We must develop very robust systems to withstand such shocks while ensuring that we don’t leave anyone behind because of their vulnerabilities,” he said during an engagement with some civil society organisations (CSOs) in Tamale in the northern region.
Somewhere in Ghana, a country known for its vibrant democracy, culture and rich history, a Foundation was birthed out of the STAR Ghana Programme.
Driven by the vehicle of Convening inclusive dialogues, catalysing active citizenship, Coordinating, and supporting strategic partnerships and Learning, STAR-Ghana Foundation continues to work diligently in supporting civil society to engage with government and drive forward a development agenda that leaves no one behind through Local Philanthropy and Active Citizenship for meaningful change.
STAR-Ghana Foundation has organized a capacity building training on Policy Brief writing for staff. The training sought to educate and equip the targeted staff with the fundamentals of good policy briefs and critical skills for tailoring policy documents to achieve the intended result.
The two-day training focused on understanding the basics of developing good policy briefs. It also highlighted the importance of clearly defining gaps and recommending workable solutions. The meeting noted, that applying the rule of accuracy, brevity and clarity helps to structure writing and focus on the essential action point in a policy brief. Participants were taken through the rudiments and types of policy briefs, how to structure it, how to give it the needed punch and who to influence among other crucial areas of consideration.
If you are familiar with the phrase that preaches taking two to knit a bargain, you most likely have wondered if there is a third party and or beneficiary lurking. Questions like these, unless obvious, are often left unanswered. They say for every rule, there is an allowable variation. In this story, you are certainly satisfying your curiosity about who takes the bargain.
This is a story of Fondation Botnar and STAR-Ghana Foundation knitting a bargain for and with the city of Koforidua, so you would be absolutely right to say two “Foundations and a city” is an exception of the knitting rule because it is a three-way bargain. A bargain that requires “duty bearers to take young people seriously and get young people involved in governance.” This has become necessary because of the apparent exclusion of the youth in local governance according to the District League Table valuation.
During a two-day project development workshop in Koforidua, Project Manager for ‘Action for Youth Development (AfYD) Our City Project’ , Dr Ernestina Korleki-Tetteh, highlighted the steps preceding the workshop, and the different levels of engagements with stakeholders including young people, the courtesy calls on the Omanhene, the municipal chief executive among others, to deliberate and provide input for the design and implementation of the pro-youth project.
Community Based Organizations (CBOs) took turns to pitch their project proposals and undertook review exercises to tailor the drafts to more youth-centered initiatives. The engagement of these potential partners is under the ‘Action for Youth Development (AfYD) Our City Project’ implemented by STAR-Ghana Foundation with funding from Fondation BOTNAR.
STAR-Ghana Foundation and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) have held an orientation for catalyst fund partners under the Civil Society Strengthening Programme Shifting Power (CSSP-#StP) in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.
The CSSP-#StP is an eight-year programme being implemented by STAR Ghana Foundation and WACSI with funding from https://www.comicrelief.com/ and the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), that seeks to enhance the effectiveness, responsiveness, and resilience of Civil Society Actors (CSAs).
Today, Swiss philanthropic organisation Fondation Botnar adds the city of Koforidua in Ghana, to its global OurCity initiative that leverages local strengths, community engagement and digital technologies to transform cities and ensure young people’s wellbeing.
Following its success in several cities, including Tanga in Tanzania and Cluj-Napoca in Romania, the city of Koforidua in Ghana is joining the OurCity initiative that supports cities in transforming them into youth-centred places by enabling young people to take part in city design and governance.
This eight-year programme aims to provide long term support to Civil Society Actors (CSA) in Ghana, contributing to their resilience, responsiveness, and effectiveness in delivering the priorities of their constituents.
It seeks to build institutional resilience of civil society organisations in Ghana by providing a more progressive, negotiated, participatory and widely owned solution to social development work.
The aim was to create an avenue for the partners to better understand the Foundation’s ways of working, including reporting requirements and how these relate to the project.
Additionally, the workshop provided a platform for identifying synergies amongst the partners to enhance collaboration.
The AVID, a two-year project with support from the Flora and Hewlett Foundation seeks to contribute to addressing systemic constraints to underserved population's access to their rights, particularly voice and influence in governance and equitable access to quality public goods and services.
In all, 44 participants participated in the AVID orientation programme and were drawn from 21 Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), and less formalised networks shortlisted after submitting concept notes through the call for partnership process. These partners were supported to fully develop their concept notes into proposals in tandem with the project’s overall goal, participated in the two-day orientation from 28th – 29th March 2023.
The Executive Director of STAR-Ghana Foundation, Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, has urged civil society to adopt a double-edged approach in their advocacy work.
He said their work must not just focus on reporting to align with the objectives and requirements of their donors but also geared towards development effectiveness.
According to Alhaji Tanko, civil society actors often force themselves to pick up positives, where perhaps it might have been more useful for them if they focused on the challenges.
“We are always focusing on what has worked because that is what the donor wants to hear. But if we do that, we lose sight of very important lessons. What hasn’t worked, what didn’t work, why didn’t it work? How do we use that moving forward.
“Donors don’t incentivise that type of learning, so we go through all kinds of concoctions to glean some results. As we move forward, we should be clear on what we want to learn or else we will go through endless learning workshops and not much coming out of it,” he said during a STAR-Ghana Foundation end of phase learning event for grant partners under the Gender Rights and Empowerment programme (G-REP), with funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), at Aburi in the Eastern Region.
He challenged civil society organisations to move beyond learning for contractual purposes, to learning beyond donor demands and for development effectiveness.
As a result of local philanthropy, Abanga Moses Aningiba is currently pursuing a degree at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Community-led philanthropy is critical to the development of every society. Developmental projects through local philanthropy is largely need-based, thus addressing specific issues with distinctive tailor-made methods depending on the community. Today, a lot of Communities in Ghana are buying into the idea of owning their development by mobilizing capital and human resources through STAR-Ghana Foundation’s Giving for Change (GfC) Programme.
During a monitoring and support visit to project implementing partners under the GfC Programme, it emerged that project communities are building school blocks, health centers, places of worship as well as undertaking education support and livelihood empowerment activities to benefit needy community members.
The visit was aimed at ascertainning progress made on implementing projects against their expected deliverables. It also served as a check for compliance against required financial practices while strategic support is offered on effective implementation of the projects.
Read more: https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/573-community-led-philanthropy-projects-driving-change
The call is coming on the back of concerns that poverty and cost-related (hidden) challenges remain foremost on the list of barriers that confront girls’ continuous access to education.
Therefore, the unique needs of girls should be factored into education financing to enable girls to enroll, remain and complete their education.
The forum was held under the theme ‘Increasing Inclusive Access to Continuous Quality Education for Girls.”
Community buy-in and support is critical to the success of efforts aimed at helping improve security and or preventing conflicts. Indeed, their involvement and ownership is almost inevitable in efforts to build resilience for risk border communities against spillovers and infiltration of violent extremism.
In Ghana, the volatile security situation in neighbouring countries to the north has heightened concerns of possible infiltration of extremists and radicalization of vulnerable demographics in border communities to disturb the relative peace in the country.
As a result, under its social cohesion project being implemented in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Ghana, STAR-Ghana Foundation held capacity building sessions for members of Community Dialogue Platforms in six (6) border communities in the Upper East Region to be able to effectively educate their communities and contribute to raising awareness and building resilience against border security threats. The Dialogue Platforms are made up of women leaders, youth groups, security agencies, traditional leaders, and the representatives of state agencies at the local level among other stakeholders. The current training, being the second of a series of trainings focused on Early Warning and Response Mechanisms as well as Gender Dynamics in Violent Extremism & Border Security.
Such a move, a Projects Manager at the Foundation, Dr Ernestina Tetteh, said would also help to improve the lots of their families, communities, and the country generally.
Speaking at a forum in Ho in the Volta Region to mark International Women’s Day (IWD) 2023, under the theme “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality,” she said the theme aligns with STAR-Ghana Foundation’s comprehensive Gender Equality and Social Inclusion plan that guides all its operations and partnerships.
She urged that in the pursuit of digital technology, no none ought to be left behind.
“Let’s remember that women and girls are not a homogeneous group, and there may be some, and a significant proportion at that, who may need a little more help in embracing technology and enjoying its benefit thereof. Subsequently, we all need to be intentional in our approach so that we do not end up excluding certain groups in our pursuit of gender equality.”
“I am thinking about women and girls with disabilities, women and girls from low social economic backgrounds, women and girls in rural communities, women, and girls with little or no formal education, women and girls who have no employment or training. We need to be deliberate to bring on board all categories of women, reaching the furthest behind first,” she said.
Read more: https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/572-leverage-technology-to-improve-livelihoods-of-women-girls
The participants were of the view that improving access to education for girls was a shared responsibility, adding that government alone cannot provide access to quality education for all.
There was therefore a call for increased collaboration among CSOs, and partnership between CSOS and government.
Speaking at the event, the Director of the Girls’ Education Unit at the Ministry of Education, Gifty Asiedu, said although government is doing its part; appointment of girls’ education officers in the regions, districts, in schools, and in some cases, men taking up the role, girls still have issues and need support.
“It is so huge that government cannot carry this burden alone. We need to deliberate on ways to give vulnerable girls the opportunity to access education. Girls need to be given opportunities, and helped,” she said.
The CSSP seeks to provide long term support to civil society in Ghana, and in effect, enhance their resilience, responsiveness, and effectiveness in delivering the priorities of its constituents.
He said the performance between boys and girls have not been the best despite efforts by the government, civil society organisations (CSOs), development partners, traditional authorities, parents, and others to improve the situation.
Mr Ibrahim-Tanko was speaking at a forum on girls’ education organized by STAR-Ghana Foundation under its Gender Rights and Empowerment Programme (G-REP). The forum which was held for stakeholders in the northern sector took place in Tamale on 2nd February 2023.
The Executive Director said there is an interplay of several causes such as poverty, traditional and religious beliefs, and practices that affect education of girls, particularly in the northern part of the country.
“So, when we talk about girls’ education, we are looking at access which has improved - enrolment has improved- we could gain gender parity. It is the retention from primary to junior high and senior high school, and the performance that is a problem.
for its effort and commitment to the development of Northern Ghana,” he said.
He said education remains the key to the development and progress of any society which also demands that premium be always paid on it.
The search of new ways of working that promote community voice and involvement in social development is imperative and has become an agenda pursued by many development actors, recently. In this spirit, two organizations, supporting civic space strengthening STAR-Ghana Foundation and the West African Civil Society Initiative (WACSI) are initiating steps towards rolling out the long-term civil society support programme-Civil Society Strengthening Programme-ShiftThePower. The Comic Relief funded project seeks to build institutional resilience of CSOs in Ghana by providing a more progressive, negotiated, participatory and widely owned solution to social development work.
The team onboarding, aims at supporting the CSSP-StP implementation teams to reconnect, renew energy and re-create enabling ways of working to optimise resources and deal with potential issues that can pose risks to effective delivery of the programme
The Civil Society Strengthening Project seeks to provide long term support to civil society in Ghana, and in effect, enhance their resilience, responsiveness, and effectiveness in delivering the priorities of its constituents. The CSSP-StP is implemented by STAR Ghana Foundation and the West African Civil Society Institute as Anchor partners for Ghana.
Efforts to facilitate access to quality education for girls continues to be frustrated by avoidable barriers confronting parents, girls and other actors vested in girls’ education.
STAR-Ghana Foundation (SGF) recognizes the need to tackle these pervasive barriers to girls’ continuous access to education, to wit, proposed discussions would be held in collaboration with relevant partners and other stakeholders in the education sector.
Read more:https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/560-promoting-girls-education-receive-major-push
Indeed, 12 rural and urban communities in the Sissala West district and Wa Municipalities have accepted local philanthropy to raise funds for public goods and services such as clinics, schools, and clean water, among others.
The GfC programme is a five-year project that aims to do development differently from a mindset that the citizenry is responsible for their own development.
With funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the GfC is anchored on the recognition that domestic resources are important in increasing local ownership of projects and influence civic actions for inclusive development.
Known as the Faako (relief) Social Fund (FSF), the project which is currently ongoing in Tamale in the Northern region seeks to raise money, and get in-kind contributions from communities, purposely, to support the less privilege, especially women in the alleged witches’ camp.
The Head of Programmes and Policy at Songtaba, Shani Abdul Kasiru, explained the FSF is a local philanthropic fund that connects Ghanaians, both home and abroad to contribute for purposes of bringing development to the people.
“Since implementation of the project, we have supported women living in exclusion (alleged witches) in food, clothing, and others. We have decided to do that because living in such deplorable conditions they have been neglected and there is no form of social support,” he said.
He said the support has renewed hopes at the camp.https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/561-songtaba-raises-funds-to-support-vulnerable-groups
Read more: https://www.star-ghana.org/latest-news/561-songtaba-raises-funds-to-support-vulnerable-groups
