Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana has led an awareness drive in the Upper East Region aimed at strengthening understanding and improving coordinated response to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), bringing together key institutional actors in the region.
The engagement was held at the Kofi Annan ICT Centre in Bolgatanga under a GIZ-funded initiative. It brought together stakeholders, including Social Welfare, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), health workers, and media practitioners, to deepen collaboration in prevention, response, and survivor support services.
Programmes Manager Gabriel Jeffrey Akandawen Ananya said the initiative seeks to strengthen coordination among institutions working along the SGBV response pathway and improve how cases are managed and referred.
He explained that bringing stakeholders together was necessary to build capacity and close gaps in awareness and service delivery.
“We saw the need to bring stakeholders who work around the SGBV pathways together so that we build their capacity and also create a platform for them to coordinate among themselves so that we can bring some help to the people who are affected by SGBV,” he said.
He added that the platform will support sustained collaboration among stakeholders and improve future response systems.
A participant, Susanna Atanga, a public health nurse at the Bolgatanga Municipal Health Directorate, said the engagement had strengthened her understanding of multi-sectoral coordination in handling SGBV cases.
She noted that health workers play a key role in providing medical and clinical support, ensuring confidentiality, and making timely referrals to relevant institutions such as Social Welfare, CHRAJ, and the Ghana Education Service.
She further stressed the importance of collaboration among stakeholders in ensuring survivors receive comprehensive support across all levels of care. She said confidentiality, coordination, and timely referral remain critical in improving outcomes for survivors of SGBV.
The engagement ended with a call for sustained collaboration among stakeholders to strengthen coordinated, survivor-centred responses to sexual and gender-based violence across communities in the Upper East Region.
A1Radioonline|101.1Mhz|Simon Ayamdoo|Bolgatanga
