Staff and community volunteers of Livelihood and Environment Ghana (LEG), a non-governmental organization championing environmental and human rights in mining communities, have undergone a two-day training in digital communication.
The training was to equip participants with digital communication skills for effective advocacy was attended by participants drawn from seven regions across the country with funding support from Oxfam Novib.
“Equipping LEG’s Staff and Volunteers with Digital Communication Skills for Improved Advocacy”, was the theme for the training held in Kumasi. They were trained on how to use digital tools such as Gmail, WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media platforms to disseminate information on their advocacy work.
The goal is to enable participants to leverage on the digital space to tell the world their activities which mostly requires action from duty bearers and other critical stakeholders. Mr. Richard Adjei Poku, the Executive Director of LEG, said the training formed part of a project dubbed, “Mutual Capacity Strengthening” which seeks to strengthen civil society capacity.
He emphasized the importance of the training and how it could enhance their work, especially in an era of technological advancement. “LEG in the past two decades has done a lot of work but because our people lack the capacity to use technology to disseminate them, people think we haven’t done enough but we have done extensive work,” he stated. He hinted that beyond the digital communication training LEG would soon organize training on fundraising for its partners as part of efforts to ensure sustainable funding of their activities.
He explained that the fundraising training would be extended to partners of Oxfam in Ghana and Third World Network who are members of a consortium for the implementation of a project called “Fair for All Project.” Mr. Kofi Apraku, a Resource Person for the training, said social media had become a powerful tool for rolling out effective campaign in any endeavor.
“Equipping the participants with digital skills would help achieve the kind of change they seek to make in society,” he noted. He made the point that using digital tools to communicate their activities was critical to their work because they could reach a wider audience beyond their communities. Some of the participants who shared their experiences on the training expressed excitement about how their capacity had been built and looked forward to implementing the knowledge acquired in their field of work.
Source: GNA
