Government’s position on ongoing social policies not clear – SEND-Ghana

Frederick Asiamah

Presently, there is a hold-up on where and how civil society organisations, especially those devoted to policy advocacy such as SEND-Ghana , can engage the new National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration on ongoing social policies like the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the Northern Development Fund (NDF). All these social policies are still being reviewed by the new government. From the perspective of SEND-Ghana, “The new government of the NDC has not yet articulated clearly its position on most of the ongoing social policies hence creating hold-up on where and how to engage.” As he walks us through SEND-Ghana, Mr Samuel A. Zan, Country Director, points out that this hold up is one of the general challenges his organisation is confronted with.

Let us beware that the concept of participatory democracy becomes meaningless when citizens or representative social actors are curtailed by one factor or the other from engaging with their government(s). Perhaps, the worse case scenario is when the hindrances are the result of the actions or omissions of the ruling class.

What drives SEND-Ghana?

SEND-Ghana is a national non-governmental organization exclusively devoted to policy advocacy. The organization envisions a Ghana where people’s rights and well-being are guaranteed. It works to promote good governance and equality for women and men in Ghana. According to Mr. Zan, the acronym PEOPLE encapsulates SEND-Ghana’s six core values. The organisation holds dear participatory decision making, equality of women and men, openness and accountability, partnership, learning and sharing of knowledge, and enabling action based on information.

Strengths

“SEND-Ghana is the only advocacy organization in Ghana that has developed methodologies and institutional framework for planning and implementing economic literacy targeting civil society organizations and district assemblies,” the Country Director points out. Besides, the organisation has capacity to work with civil society organizations and all levels of Government and has developed an innovative framework for government and civil society engagement at all levels. SEND-Ghana’s has also developed strong partnership with marginalized groups such as the Ghana Federation of the Disabled, women and small scale producers. Furthermore, it has developed relationship with more than ten international donors that support its advocacy activities globally. Lastly, SEND-Ghana facilitates Coalitions for monitoring the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Aid Effectiveness and most recently, for providing complementary services to the GSFP through the CSO Platform on the GSFP.

Stakeholders

“The communities are key in our policy advocacy programme. Our main stakeholders thus are the rural poor individuals and communities, and the disadvantaged social groups like women and persons with disabilities,” says the Country Director. Nonetheless, the organization’s stakeholders are both external and internal, and include donors from across Europe. In Ghana, there are district level partners such as the civil society led citizen monitoring committees called the District HIPC Monitoring Committees (DHMC) and the District Assemblies. At the regional level are the Regional Coordinating Councils while key ministries and Parliamentary Select Committees are at the National level for close collaboration.

Programmes

SEND-Ghana engages in innovative pro-poor research, economic literacy and advocacy Informed by its strategic plan for the period 2008 to 2012, SEND-Ghana is organized around three distinct programme areas, namely: participatory monitoring and evaluation of pro-poor policies with a comprehensive but focused advocacy programme on education and health; trade policy research; and MDGs monitoring. Currently, SEND-Ghana is working on the GSFP, the NHIS, the Capitation Grant, the NGDF, as well as, contract award and management in the education and health sectors.

Funding

The organization is funded through proposal development to strategic partners. Christian Aid-UK, CAFOD-UK, IBIS-Denmark, Diakonia-Sweden, Trocaire-Ireland, ICCO-Netherlands, and Cordaid-Netherland are among the donors. Since last year, SEND-Ghana has benefited from core funding from the Ghana Research and Advocacy Programme (G-RAP) amounting to 150,000 dollars for an 18-month period. Mr. Zan stated that the core support has been applied to leverage further training for staff, fully implement the organisation’s staff housing and workplace policies. It has also been applied to create and facilitate physical environment for work.

Publications

SEND-Ghana has numerous publications to its credit. Among them are those made under the HIPC Watch Project/Grassroots Economic Literacy and Advocacy Programme (GELAP) I & II. The list includes the HIPC Watch Update (a newsletter published quarterly since 2002), Performance Assessment of Government of Ghana utilization of HIPC Relief Fund in Northern Ghana (2004), Civil Society Engagement in Poverty Reduction Strategies: The Ghana HIPC Watch Experience (2005), Where did the HIPC Funds Go? Assessing HIPC Expenditures on Poverty Alleviation 2002-2004 (2006), Persons with Disability Lobby Week Report (2007), HIPC Funded Projects 2002-2005 – What impact? An Assessment of the Impact of the First Generation (2002-2005) HIPC funded Projects in Ghana (2007), and Whose Decision Counts? A Monitoring Report on the Ghana School Feeding Programme (2008). Other publications include Free Trade, Small Scale Production and Poverty (2008), Ghana Civil Society Monitoring Campaign – Millennium Development Goal Monitoring Report (2008), Enhancing Stakeholder Participation in the Ghana School Feeding Programme (A report on the Ghanaian-Dutch Civil Society platform on the Ghana School Feeding Programme, 2008), and Challenges Of Institutional Collaboration: An Assessment Of The State of Complementary Services In the Ghana School Feeding Programme (2009).

Impacts

According to the Country Director, “The mobilization of citizens at the grassroots to engage policy at the decentralized levels and increase confidence of grassroots to engage policy implementers is a major breakthrough.” Apart from that, “Hardly any major national social policy debate passes without at least the media seeking the opinion of SEND.”

Challenges

With respect to capacity, in the short term recruiting and maintaining the right calibre of staff is a major task. For the medium to long term, the need to upgrade the skills of staff in the face of changing dynamics is crucial. SEND-Ghana believes in organizational development where the right systems and policies are evolved to meet the requirements of gender equality and state-of-the-art good employer responsibilities. “Yet current project funding does not allow for enough flexibility funds to be spent on ‘intangibles’ like these,” noted Mr. Zan.

Generally, the change in donor focus to the Multi Donor Budgetary Support framework is a constraint in terms of being able to source enough funds to complement government’s initiatives from same donors. Another challenge is posed by the credit crunch which has resulted in declining donor support thereby creating funding gaps. Moreover, the unwillingness of partners to make contribution towards the core funding/running of the organization is a fetter. On the other hand, the new government of the NDC has not yet articulated clearly its position on most of the ongoing social policies hence creating hold-up on where and how to engage. Added to this is an unhealthy competition among CSOs.

Target

The organization seeks to promote strong citizen-government dialogue in the implementation of pro-poor policies through a participatory monitoring and evaluation process. This definitely can take so many years to materialize as building of people’s capacity to be able to engage is a continuous activity.

The way forward

There is the need to create more opportunity for policy dialogue by expanding and looking at other pro-poor policies which can help reduce poverty. In this regard, Mr. Zan says “Policy education/sensitization needs to be strengthened to enhance citizen participation in governance.” There is the need to improve policy implementation by networking with other organizations with common interest. There is the need to continue to build the organization’s capacity to continue to be competitive and relevant in the changing dynamics of the world order.