Mr Husein Elyasu, the Sissala East Municipal Director of the National Commission for Civic Education, has commended the people of Kowie community in the Municipality for initiating and constructing a local kindergarten school block for children.

He charged them to work diligently to achieve their objective of getting a better facility to improve early childhood education in the community.

Mr Elyasu was speaking at Kowie in the Sissala East Municipality of the Upper West Region during a development dialogue between the community and the Municipal Assembly.

He said the new paradigm of development was for communities to build partnerships with other development agencies to initiate their own development projects and executing them with the help of the development partners.

He said they could also contribute their quota towards helping complete projects and programmes being undertaken in the communities by the government and other development partners.

Mr Elyasu noted that this could be done by pooling local resources both human and material, advocacy and lobbying as well as formulation of community development action plans.

Madam Patience Sally Kumah, the Regional Director of the NCCE, noted that the essence of social auditing was not only meant to hold duty bearers accountable but also for communities to be held responsible to contribute their quota towards development.

She explained that social auditing was a process and not an event and therefore entreated community members to exercise patience and do follow-ups to the Assembly to ensure their objectives were achieved.

Mr Karim Nanyua, the Sissala East Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) said he was happy that education was the major concern of the community.

He, however, urged the community members to be interested in other child protection issues as well, so that children in the community could develop their full potentials through education.

The MCE promised that a modern Kindergarten block and a bore-hole would be provided in the community before the end of the year.

The people of Kowie identified construction of a modern kindergarten, drilling of borehole, construction of a Community-Based Health Planning System (CHPS) compound, extension of electricity to the basic school and other parts of the community as well as the construction of a dam for dry season farming and livestock rearing as their major needs.

The social audit engagement was to afford opportunity for members of the community and the duty bearers from the Sissala East Municipal Assembly to dialogue on the way forward to addressing the development needs of the community.

The programme was also to promote community ownership of developmental projects and policies, increase awareness of the operations of the Local Government and empower the citizenry to demand accountability from duty bearers.

The social audit engagement was organised by the NCCE with support from the European Union under the Accountability, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Programme (ARAP).

The objective of ARAP is to promote good governance in Ghana by reducing corruption and improve accountability and compliance with the rule of law.

At the end of the engagement, a seven member social audit committee was formed and charged with the responsibility of liaising with authorities at the assembly and other development partners to bring the project to fruition.