Mrs Juliana Azumah-Mensah, Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC), on Thursday announced that, the four-year Gender Responsive Skills and Community Development Project (GRSCDP) operated under the Ministry was on course despite initial challenges.

However, she said the project jointly funded by African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Government would need additional funding and extension to other districts to help address the numerous challenges, and appealed to the bank for support to achieve the desired goals of the project.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah made the appeal when addressing stakeholders at the GRSCDP Mid-Term Review in Accra.

It provided a platform for the project management and stakeholders to assess the gains so far, challenges and the way forward, to achieve set goals.

She announced some achievements of the project over the past two years, these included provision of scholarships for 200 girls from poor households in 59 project beneficiary districts, to undergo four-year training in predominantly male dominated vocational and technical skills development.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said the training areas included masonry, auto mechanic, carpentry, electrical and plumbing to provide them with marketable employment opportunities and entrepreneurship development to become independent.

She said the project had provided training for selected staff of key Ministries and teachers of selected Vocational and Technical Training Institutions as well as the 59 beneficiary District Assembles, to enable them mainstream gender issues into their respective activities.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said, some challenges facing the project were the relatively slow response rate of the bank to the disbursement of project funding and the arbitrary and frequent replacement of beneficiaries of the District Scholarship Scheme by the districts without recourse to the Project Management Unit, as some setbacks.

“The Project is to award scholarships to 500 girls, but demand for the scholarship has assumed stressful dimensions that there is the need for further extension in terms of financial support to ensure maximum impact,” she said.

However, Mrs Azumah-Mensah reaffirmed government’s commitment to mainstreaming gender concerns into the national development process and improve the social-economic, cultural, legal, civic and political conditions of the people of Ghana, particularly women and children.

“This is geared towards achieving the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 and 3, which focuses on poverty reduction and the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment,..yet gender discrimination in access to and control over productive resources and limited access to social services exacerbate women’s vulnerability to poverty,” she said.

Mrs Azumah-Mensah said Government in its policy framework, recognised the importance of women’s empowerment and equitable participation in development as a necessary process for ensuring that such national policies and poverty reduction strategies were translated into gains at both the household and community levels.

She explained that, the Government in giving a true meaning to its commitment to addressing the gender imbalances in all fronts of the society had taken the lead by releasing its counterpart funding of 41.83 per cent timely, which was ahead of the Bank's disbursement rate which stood at 22.44 per cent, to ensure the successful implementation of the project.

The Minister expressed appreciation to the AfDB for the support, but urged it to speed up its disbursement to facilitate progress of the project.

Madam Mulle Chikoko, Principal Social Protection Specialist from the AfDB, who was in the country to ascertain the level of progress of GRSCDP in Ghana, expressed contentment at the level of implementation and successes chalked so far despite the challenges.

She said although the challenges were enormous, they were not insurmountable and called for intensified partnership and involvement of stakeholders to ensure the sustenance of the project even after funding had ended.**