The Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) is to hold a midterm review meeting to assess the overall progress of its Gender Responsive Skills and Community Development Project (GRSCDP) in Accra on Tuesday March 27.

The meeting, expected to be attended by 200 participants drawn from the various Ministries and institutions, project beneficiary districts, the media and other stakeholders would help review the extent to which the objectives of the project had been fulfilled.

GRSCDP is a four-year project being jointly funded by the Government and African Development Bank (AfDB) to enable government mainstream gender into Ghana’s socio-economic development agenda to achieve the MDGs 1 and 2, that focus on poverty reduction and the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

A brief report issued in Accra and copied to GNA on Monday said the project which was approved in May 2008 and received effectiveness in January 2009 was being implemented with ADF loan portfolio of 9.26 million dollars and a grant of 3.67 million dollars while the Government was contributing $1.70 million dollars.

The project sought to strengthen the institutional capacity of MOWAC and other key selected line Ministries and these include the Ministries of Health, Education and Agriculture, District assemblies as well as providing support to women and youth in developing marketable skills and further enhance their access to financial and business development services.

The project within the past two-and-a-half year period had trained about 200 professional staffs in various professional trainings in ICT, offer scholarship for 200 girls from poor households in the 59 beneficiary districts to study technical and mechanical trades in community development technical/vocational institutes.

About 140 computers as well as 10 motorcycles had been secured and supplied to MOWAC staff and Regional Directorates of the Department of Community Development for monitoring the rehabilitation works at the 25 Community Development Vocational and Technical Institute (CDVTIs) in the 10 Regions.

The report indicated that the project had been confronted with challenges like the delay in the request for no objection as a result of the rampant change of task managers at the AfDB which somewhat impeded progress of work.

It said lack of proper understanding of the scholarship scheme had resulted in some beneficiaries withdrawing from the institutes while some scholarship committees replace beneficiaries without informing the project.

The review meeting, therefore, would help review the overall progress of implementation of GRSCDP to date, identify gaps, challenges and way forward and discuss the concerns of stakeholders and subsequently foster stronger partnership.**