EU Resilience Against Climate Change (EU-REACH) has held a 2-day workshop in Wa, Upper West Region, to share results of a socio-economic and gender baseline survey with stakeholders and partners.
The baseline results emphasized the status of social, economic and gender aspects of the project area at the inception of REACH interventions.
These findings will help inform the communities to be identified for specific development interventions for the REACH Project and provide the basis for monitoring progress and evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the interventions in the Project area.
Among other things, the results revealed that the youth have very limited access to land and demonstrated that women were disadvantaged in terms of education levels, income levels, social capital, access to extension, access to assets and control of the different assets and benefits coming from farming. These findings will inform planning and offer a strong basis for targeted and inclusive interventions to cater for women, youth, and vulnerable groups.
The workshop provided a platform for 56 participants comprising relevant policy makers, traditional authority, district and regional directors of agriculture, planning officers, representatives of private institutions and non-governmental organizations to deliberate extensively and collectively, determine how best to ensure that REACH supports are gendered and consider the different interests of women, men, youth, children and people with disabilities to ensure an equitable improvement in the livelihood of all.
In his address at the opening of the workshop, Team Leader for the REACH project, Florian Johannes Winckler noted that “Since the inception of the Project, we have been engaging stakeholders on a more sustainable way of building resilience to the menace of climate change from an institutional, communal and individual household level. These engagement in our estimation have been fruitful thus far and would continue to ensure a more concerted approach to implementing the project”.
“This workshop will find synergies that will help us fine tune our activities to ensure an effective and a coordinated implementation of the REACH project” he said.
Resilience Against Climate Change is an EU supported project that commenced in January 2019 and will run until the end of 2024. The project is being implemented by the Competitive Cashew Initiative (GIZ-ComCashew) and the International Water Management Institute, in close collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture.
