DAILY GRAPHIC, Monday, April 23, 2012, Pg.11. Friendship Foundation International honours women

 

The three in front are the Founder & National Coordinator of FFI, Mrs Agnes Mfon Gowon (left), the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Values for Life, a non-governmental organisation; Ms Dzifa Gomashie (middle), Ms Gifty Anti, a broadcast journalist at Ghana Television (right); and a cross-section of the participants in the FFI thanksgiving and award ceremony in Accra.


 

A Council Member of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, Mrs Ifey Ikeonu, making her presentation at the programme.

 Story: Mary Ankrah

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been urged to continue to advocate, enlighten and educate women on issues relating to their welfare to strengthen their participation in sustainable development.

They have also been encouraged to hold various governments accountable to fulfil their obligations to the populace especially towards ensuring compliance with fundamental human rights to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

That, according to a Council Member of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, Mrs Ifey Ikeonu, could be achieved by re-orienting the public and private sectors to initiate programmes that would be harnessed towards economic development of women through agriculture, self-reliance and taking comprehensive steps to eliminate gender-based discrimination that hinders gender equity and sustainable development.

She announced this at the fourth annual thanksgiving and award ceremony of the Friendship Foundation International (FFI), an NGO in Ghana, held in Accra last Saturday.

In her presentation on the theme: “Strengthening the participation of women in sustainable development: Role of NGOs, Mrs Ikeonu observed that women farmers could be educated on forming co-operatives that would enable them to rise from the level of subsistence farming to farming as a major source of income and encourage agricultural practices that would ensure higher yields.

She added that when using firewood as a source of fuel, women could be enlightened to use efficient wood or coal cooking stoves that minimised the quantity of wood used and encouraged to plant more trees to replace felled ones.

On self-reliance, she said NGOs could help women to tap opportunities to serve as a source of wealth creation to become self-sufficient, adding that NGOs could also educate communities to utilise these resources in a more sustainable way to ensure that the resources were not depleted to the detriment of future generations.

To this end, she entreated NGOs to ensure that women in poor and rural communities utilised “self-help and mutual help initiatives” to empower themselves.

Mrs Ikeonu stated that NGOs could partner with governments and local authorities to make broader impact on society to promote women’s participation at all levels of decision-making and recognise their leadership potential.

She, therefore, appealed to African leaders and governments to involve more women as part of their delegations to global meetings to make useful contributions to how proposed policies could affect the life of citizens, particularly women, to provide broader impact for sustainable development in their respective countries.

The FFI used the occasion to award two women -  Ms Gifty Anti, a broadcast journalist and the FFI Ambassador for the MDG, for using the media to constantly advocate for women’s rights and enlighten the populace on the challenges women face in society, and Ms Carol Ajie, a well-known Nigerian gender rights advocate and legal practitioner, for being the most distinguished FFI female lawyer in Africa.