Civil societies supporting the fight against Covid-19 in Ghana have expressed concern about the ‘inadequate capture’ of their efforts in national discourse.
This was at a media interaction by the STAR- Ghana Foundation on the status of its COVID-19 Response Project (CRP) in Ghana.
The Executive Director of the STAR- Ghana Foundation Ibrahim Amidu Tanko, said the CRP is one of several interventions by CSOs to complement government’s effort at managing the pandemic hence, the need to make it more visible.
BACKGROUND
In April 2020, Star-Ghana Foundation launched its Covid-19 Response Project (CRP) to among others, mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and response actions on vulnerable social groups.
The CRP is being implemented around four components: education, policy influencing and implementation, provision of support to vulnerable groups and shared learning.
The project implementation so far.
The Foundation awarded a total of four million, six hundred and thirty-one thousand, seven hundred and thirty-nine Ghana cedis and forty pesewas (GHS 4, 631,739.01) to eight (8) implementing partners.
These are the Media Foundation for West Africa, (MFWA), Caritas Ghana, the Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations (GFDO) and Pensplusbyte.
The rest are the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WASCI) and the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG)
Media Interaction and Progress made
At an interaction with the media in Accra, the eight partners shared lessons and progress on the first phase of the CRP since its implementation in April:
In the area of preventing misinformation on Covid-19, the MFWA has launched what is known as the factcheckekghana.com to gather and relay credible covid-19 information for onward broadcast by about 50 radio stations across the country.
This is in addition to ‘denouncing covid-19 rumours’ on various social media platforms by the MFWA.
In June, CHAG developed 150,000 copies of IEC materials on prevention and control of covid-19’. CHAG has also trained ‘400 health workers’ on Covid-19 case prevention and management.
Another partner, Penplusbytes has also developed an online platform www.covid19infogh.org to ‘provide reliable access to covid-19 information’ to the public.
The Way Forward
The Communications Manager for WACSI, Jimm Chick asked government to further strengthen collaboration with CSOs due to the critical role being played by them.
The Executive Director of the Star-Ghana Foundation, Amidu Ibrahim-Tanko said progress made so far under the first phase, will provide a solid foundation in the implementation of the second phase which begins September this year.
Ghana | Atinkaonline.com | Abubakar Sarpong
