The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Ghana, has launched its Sahel Peace Initiative (SPI) Working Group to champion its activities in the country for social cohesion and peace building.

The group which was launched in collaboration with the Ghana Catholic Bishop Conference (GCBC) as part of its projects, would serve as a platform for the Church and the Initiative to continue its strong partnership in peace building.

Mr Daniel Mumuni, Country Representative, CRS-Ghana, said the Episcopal Conferences of West Africa had launched the SPI on November 14,2019 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso to deliberate on the prevention of violent conflicts and maintain peace in the region.

He said Ghana had made efforts to push forward the agenda of the initiative in the country.

"We all know why the SPI initiative is important, there is a traditional saying that, when your friend's beard is on fire, you put water right next to yours, and so for us in Ghana we are very privileged that up until now, we have peace but we also see growing threat of violence in this country. The possibility is always there," he added.

Mr Mumuni said they had been taking steps to draw the attention of the government, the Church and local partners to some of these threats and work together in a consented manner to ensure that the nation did not experience the challenges the counterparts of the Sahel had been suffering.

He said, "We require a lot of wisdom to be able to advance peace because, it is not an easy thing to achieve, I just want to say huge thank you to the church for taking the bull by the horn and the leadership that it has been demonstrating".

Mr David Pwayidi, Youth and Migrant Project Manager, CRS, said the Working Group would validate a Ghana- specific strategy to ensure individuals in Ghana experienced greater levels of peace, social cohesion and resiliency.

He said the group would develop and publish policy recommendations on areas critical to peace building in the country, host and attend advocacy forums in and out of the country with stakeholders including the government of Ghana, United States of America Government and donors.

He explained that the Group would offer guidance, advice and share project updates, decisions and learning with member organisations, and coordinate with CRS to seek joint opportunities for scaling up its activities.

Mr Pwayidi added that the group would also partner and engage interfaith groups and religious leaders on peace building initiatives, and facilitate learning, and share best practices across the region.

According to the Project Manager, because of the Covid-19 restrictions, the initiative which had sought to focus on technical and managerial capacity building during its first year of implementation were not possible but had master trainings on virtual formats.

Therefore they focused on humanitarian responses which could be carried out by the church and CRS teams already in the field.

He said assessment findings about conflicts were published July last year and all key stakeholders had validated and had been used to inform programming decisions with SPI.He stated that 12 CRS and partner staff had participated in the Rising from Resilient Roots (RRR) master training, 40 youth leaders had been trained on trauma resilience through RRR, over 220 youth had been engaged in social cohesion activities such as community service and RRR.

"The Bishop of Yendi held 4 peace forums, 135 participants. Forums united responsibilities from conflicted political and community groups to engage in dialogue while committing to peaceful resolutions of conflict," he said.

He said SPI had collaborated with Caritas Denmark, OSFAM and IMS to host a panel highlighting locally led responses to the Sahel crisis.

The Initiative, he said, with inputs from country programmes, finalised a set of policy recommendations to the U.S. government.

"The talking point guides all discussions between the U.S. government and CRS on the Sahel, the points have been shared with key influencers, agencies and actors across U.S government," he added.