Tamale, June 25, GNA - The Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA) and its Danish counterpart, the Ghana Friendship Groups in Denmark

(GV) is to invest over 4 million dollars over a two-year period to strengthen and empower communities in the Northern Region to pursue their

own development goals.

This is under a new programme dubbed: Empowerment for Life (E4L) The E4L Programme comes with an initial two-year cycle from January 2010 to December 2011 and is made up of three components. These are Complementary Basic Education (CBE), Local Organisation an d Mobilisation (LOM) and Youth Employment with two sub-components and Civil

Society Strengthening (CSS) also with two components and the Community-managed Livelihood Improvement with four sub components.

Mrs. Rosemond Kumah, Programmes Advocacy and Communication Officer o f Empowerment for Life, said this at an orientation workshop organized by t he GDCA in Tamale on Thursday. She said the overall goal of the CSS was to strengthen and empower community groups and individuals and in particular, marginalized women an d youth groups to determine their own priorities.

Mr. Gmabi Philip, the sub-component Coordinator of LOM, said the sub-components objectives were to strengthen and empower 2,500 individual s in Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) and local NGOs and women and yout h groups to lead their communities to determine their priorities and pursue

them.

He said it also seeks to reinforce the CBO network structures and enhance networking of CBOs in 14 districts to form a strong pressure grou p.

Mr Gmabi said LOM sought to enhance the district assembly concept of inclusiveness by increasing the number of women in the Assemblies from ei ght percent to 20 percent by September 2010. He said the organization would also advocate for the election of district chief executives while pressing for construction of the roads in

the Northern Region with special emphasis on the Tamale-Nawuni and easter n corridor roads. 25 June 10