Basket weaving is a major source of income for many people in the Upper East Region. With women dominating in this profit making venture, the sector provides income for households in most parts of the region. Most children owe their education and healthcare to income generated by their parents through the weaving of baskets.
The sector for decades now has employed the region’s teeming unemployed youth who would have travelled to southern Ghana in search of nonexistent jobs. However, the basket business is dwindling due to outmoded designs supplied to the industry by the weavers. The usual U-shape, round shape and V shape of baskets is no longer attracting international markets like it use to be.
It is for this purpose that the Sirigu Women’s Organization for Pottery and Art (SWOPA) organized a training session in unique basket weaving for some women of Sirigu community of Kasena Nankana West District.
The women were trained on how to weave an oval shape and square shape kind of baskets which are of high demand on the international basket market. The workshop which also aimed at empowering beneficiary weavers will enable them stay in the industry.
According to Bridget Adongo Akasise, Director of SWOPA the training forms part of a partnership with Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizational Development (CIKOD).
The five year Canadian government funded project dubbed “Empowering Mutual Partnership for Women Economic Resilience (EMPOWER)” started in 2012 and seeks to improve the livelihood of women in the society.
“We are training 25 women and these are trainers of trainers and we expect that when they are trained they will go back to their various groups and also train them,” she stated.
Women economic empower program manager of CIKOD, Elham Mumuni said the EMPOWER project operates in Ghana, Ethopia and Zambia. According to her, the implementing partners of the project are University for Development Sstudies and other local partners.
In order to empower women in the Sirigu community madam Elham said her outfit earlier trained them in indigenous development value chain as well marketing opportunities for canvass printing, pottery and basket weaving. However the baskets were not easily marketable at the international market.
“So we went back to the drawing board and we had a discussion with SWOPA and all the other partners and it was agreed at our project implementation meeting that we should fill in that gap. And then fortunately the trainers we got to train them have an international market for these particular baskets that they are being taught but they don’t have so much people who know how to weave it so the plan is that when they weave they sell it to them and they export it” madam Elham said.
She stressed that the choice of empowering women in the project adds up to efforts at giving voice to women to make informed decisions especially on things that affects them in their various communities.
By: Joshua Asaah | A1RADIOONLINE.com | Ghana
