Partnerships
Right from Ghana Friends’ very first engagement in Northern Ghana, the activities have been carried out in collaboration with our local partner, Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA). The collaboration remains a foundation for the association.
In 2010 a new partner Youth Empowerment for Life (YEfL) was added.
One of the important features in a partnership is to maintain a close relationship and develop both organizations in a common agreement. This achieved from mutual respect and through inspections and exchange visits involving partners from both Ghana and Denmark.
GDCA
Ghana Developing Communities Association
Ghana Friends oldest partner is Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCP). GDCA's philosophy is to improve the lives and living conditions through empowerment of people.
For more than 30 years, GV and GDCA's cooperation and friendship has touched and contributed to an improvement of the livelihood of hundreds of poor and marginalised communities in Northern Ghana and influenced thousands ghanaian lives in the northern Ghana.
Currently GDCA implements two programs in collaboration with Ghana Friendship: Empowerment for Life and PARSAO.
As an umbrella organization for a number of local non-governmental organisations with different focuses on development activities, including School for Life and Community Life Improvement Programme. GDCA is educating children, improving farming practises of local farmers, broadcasting local community radio, supporting women's participation in election and lots more.
School for Life
The local civil society organization School for Life has since 1995 - in collaboration with Ghana Friends, Ghana’s ministry of education and several major international organizations - worked to provide children better access to quality education. School for Life has developed a model for complementary basic education, where children out of school are offered a 9-month course, where they learn to read, write and count. They can then be enrolled into a formal primary school. Having developed this successful model of complementary basic education, SfL now works to ensure that Ghana's government implements this model throughout Ghana. School for Life is part of the Empowerment for Life program.
Changing Lives in Innovative Partnerships
Changing Lives in Innovative Partnerships (CLIP) has since 2007 worked with community development in the north of Ghana with a special focus on poverty alleviation, water and sanitation, food security and climate change issues. In collaboration with Ghana Friendship, it has established wells in more than 90 local communities. In the Empowerment for Life program CLIP has among other things been actively involved in the improving the organization of peasants and farmers. CLIP is also leading the involvement in the projects PARSAO and Communities United in Fighting Child Hunger.
Youth Empowerment for Life Ghana
The Youth Empowerment for Life Ghana (YEfL Ghana) civil society organisation was formed in 2010 to create a formal organization for the youth movement in northern Ghana, which was started as a collaboration between Ghana Friends and GDCA in 2005. Young people constitute 75% of the population in Ghana, but is still marginalized as a group. YEfL is a platform where young people´s issues and interests can be brought on the agenda and given a voice.
The aim of YEfL Ghana is to empower young people for them to take active responsibility for shaping their own lives and the local community. This means among other things that young people get the chance to take an entrepreneurship course and this way may be able to support themselves. Youth unemployment is a major problem, but to start your own business is often a good investment.
YEfL Ghana collaborates with Ghana Friends on implementing the Empowerment for Life programme and the Youth Speak Up project.
Acting for LIfe
Acting for Life is a French NGO which has the goal of creating better living conditions for people. The organization works with social development and poverty reduction in Africa through cooperation with local population and civil society and non-profit organisations. The aim of Acting for Life is to support local initiatives and create viable long-term projects by improving local people’s access to resources such as water, professional expertise, equipment and loans.
Acting for Life also supports innovation in the area of production, training centers and NGOs and sustainable tourism.
Ghana Friendship cooperates with Acting for Life on the project PARSAO that aims to provide the nomadic Fulani people better opportunities for cattle ranching across West Africa's borders and regions.
Partnerships, programmes and projects
Partners
Programmes/projects