Social Audit Committees From Three Regions Undergo Training in Bolga

By Peter Atogewe Wedam

Social Audit Committees (SAC) from three regions -- Upper East, Upper West and North East Upper East, Upper West and North East -- attended a three-day capacity building workshop in the Upper East Regional capital, Bolgatanga.

The 50 participants are made up of representatives from community-based organisations, local citizens' representatives and focal persons from 17 municipal and district assemblies from the three regions.

The SAC is a team of citizens' representatives whose membership is voluntary and whose major role is to monitor the implementation of key local government projects and programmes including special intervention in the local communities.

The Committees also liaise with municipal and district assemblies to communicate with the public for their inputs and reactions on the government's development efforts and help to organise town hall meetings for the public to engage duty bearers.

The workshop was organized by TEERE, a Bolgatanga-based local-governance-oriented non-governmental organisation, with funding from the German Government through GIZ and additional support from the USAID, Global Affairs Canada and Ghana's Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.

In an interview with the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of TEERE, Mr. Maxwell Banu Babilo, he disclosed that the training was to enhance the knowledge of participants on social auditing and also to create a platform to share ideas and learn from best practices from sister districts. He added that participants would be equipped with effective skills to execute their mandate as SAC members, to strengthen democratic governance and participatory development at the district levels.

The TEERE M&E Officer said during the first two days of the training, participants would be schooled on Gender Responsive Budgeting and Planning. They will be tasked to do hands-on group exercises to test their comprehension of lessons learned.

The main facilitator for the three-day training is Mr. Augustine Opoku Antwi, an Organisational Development Expert and a Training Consultant. He is scheduled to take the participants through topics such as the social audit organisation, its features and processes, introduction to social audit tools and the role of the media in social auditing among other relevant topics.

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