Seventy Ghanaian-based women’s rights advocacy groups and senior journalists have received training on how to improve reporting and advocacy on women’s rights online issues in Ghana.
The training, which was organised by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), had participants including officials from the Domestic Violence & Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, the Ministry of Gender and Department of Social Welfare and influential media houses in Ghana.
The training highlighted the prevailing issues affecting women’s participation in Ghana’s online space and made recommendations towards addressing them. Participants were taken through some of the available online tools and opportunities for journalists and women advocacy groups to ‘craft their own narrative’ and champion the cause of women’s rights online.
A trainer at the workshop, Ms. Jemila Abdulai, the Creative Director of Circumspecte.com, said women and the media are two key groups that can help push the positive narrative about women’s rights online and urged them to use their skills and media platforms to engage the issues.
Ms. Shamima Muslim, Convener for Alliance for Women in Media, also coached journalists on how to effectively report on the challenges of women’s rights online and urged them to use their skills and media platforms for effective reporting on the issues.
Participants of the workshop disclosed that the event had provided an opportunity for them to learn. Some of the journalists particularly indicated that they had acquired more skills for their work.
“The programme was an eye-opener. Events like these make us learn and add unto our knowledge. I think more of such workshops should be organised,” Nana Poku, a journalist with The Daily Searchlight newspaper, said.
The workshop resulted in the setting up of a Women’s Rights Online Ghana (WRO-Ghana) platform to engage the conversation and push the agenda on women’s rights online in Ghana forward.
The women’s right online project is under the MFWA’s Freedom of Expression Programme that promotes freedom of expression offline and online. The women’s rights online project is being funded by the World Wide Web Foundation.
