Mr Benard Y. Guri, Executive Director of the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD), who made the assertion, added that through EMPOWER, the culture of silence and non-participation in decision making among women was gradually being broken as many of the women who benefited from the project’s community level trainings have had their confidence boosted and were now able to speak up at public gatherings.

Mr Guri said this during a stakeholders meeting in Wa held under the theme: “Sustaining the ‘EMPOWER’ Gains: the Role of Traditional Women Leaders and other Stakeholders”.

He said it is exciting and refreshing to note that some of the women after having their capacities built are now actively participating and taking up leadership positions that hitherto were male dominated positions.

The Executive Director of CIKOD said development was about women and children empowerment, adding that women all over the world were the people that sustained families in terms of difficulties, hence the focus of the project on women and their economic and political empowerment.

Madam Elham Mumuni, Gender and Women Empowerment Manager for the CIKOD, said a total of 691women benefited directly from the implementation of EMPOWER across the Upper West and Upper East Regions.

She said the women received their training in 10 different themes including women leadership, economic empowerment, food processing, soap making, bleach, powder and pomade making among others have also trained over 10,000 women and girls through step-down trainings.

“For us, it is refreshing to find women in local communities whose capacities have been built and they are challenging the status quo”, she said and added that over 67.1 percent of women who benefited from the project have taken up leadership roles in their families, within groups, the community and at the district level.

Mrs Eugenia H. Atami, Empower Project Coordinator said the purpose of the meeting was to afford them the opportunity to deliberate on the gains made and to find out what role traditional women leaders could play to sustain the project and improve on the gains made.

Additionally, she said, the project idea was to build women leadership to promote economic empowerment and food security, adding that based on the project impact they were seeing, there was the need for them to review what they did over the past five years and see what gains could be carried forward as the project came to an end.

EMPOWER, is a women leadership and food security programme that is being implemented in Ghana, Zambia and Ethiopia with funding from Global Affairs Canada through the Coady International Institute.

It was attended by traditional women leaders from Upper West and Upper East Regions, representatives of the five local partners, some government departments, civil society and other Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs).