MFWA promotes women's rights through radio stations

Accra, Dec. 9, GNA – The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) under its programme, Media Capacity Building for Democratisation and Human rights has for the past 11 months built the capacity of 12 radio stations across the country to promote women's rights.

The project, titled: “Using Radio to Promote Women's Rights in Ghana,” is being implemented in partnership with the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Women's Department of Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC) and Domestic Violence and Victims' Support Unit (DOVVSU) of Ghana Police Service.

A statement issued in Accra on Friday said with funding from Star Ghana, the project had so far trained 24 journalists and producers from the radio stations and each of the stations had now introduced a specific weekly programme addressing women's rights.

Among other achievements, the radio programmes, have resulted in the formation of clubs to promote women's rights in some communities; abolition of proverbs and songs that denigrated women while in some cases, the project radio stations have helped report cases of women's rights violations to DOVVSU and CHRAJ.

To further boost the quality of the radio programmes and its impact, the MFWA with its partners, DOVVSU, CHRAJ and MOWAC, would on December 5-0, 2011 embark on community engagements in the Western and Central Regions to explore ideas from community members, particularly women and find better ways of improving the content of the women's rights radio programmes.

The Programme Officer in-charge of Capacity Building and Training at MFWA, Abigail Larbi, said the organisation decided to embark on the project because of the critical role the media play in awareness creation and sensitisation and also to ensure closer bonds between the community, (especially women), radio stations and the authorities.

She said she was was optimistic that the radio programmes would continue to give voice to the voiceless in society.

Miss Larbi said MFWA was considering seeking additional support to expand the project to cover additional radio stations and districts.

The community forums would be held at Tarkwa, Sekondi, Takoradi, Axim, Cape Coast and Winneba.

GNA