Established in 1997 with a deep interest in assisting rural women in basketry, weaving, pottery and craft works, the Sirigu Women Organisation for Pottery and Art (SWOPA) in the Kasena Nankana west district of the Upper East Region is leaving no stone unturned in reaching its target audience with the use of radio programmes.
The women are trained in basketry, weaving, pottery and craft works for their livelihood, but they are now scared that communal conflict in the district is affecting the progress of their work. They complained that most of their investors are foreigners who are scared of the intermitted land conflict between Doba and Kandiaga. (two communities in the Kasena Nankana Municipality and Kasena West district that has engaged in a land dispute).
Mrs. Adongo Bridget Akasise, the managers of Sirigu Women Organisation for Pottery and art, told Word news that they have decided to use the radio as a tool to reach out to its large number of people over the impact of conflict in the communities. A six week “on air” program is set to be rolled out to educate the mases on the negative impact of the conflict. The first three weeks will be in Gurune, while the remaining weeks will be in the English dialect.
“Radio will help us get to a larger coverage in educating the people as compared to a community-to- community engagement. we have only five communities, so we decided to use word FM to reach to a larger population, the program will be in two languages; English and Gurune. we know the whole area do listen to word FM and will hear us”.
She noted that the radio program has been sponsor by the Canadian fund for local initiative adding that it has been a timely intervention because the conflict has affected some of the contracts and some of the products”.
She bemoaned that the imposition of curfew has affected their production.
Some of the beneficiary communities include: Kandiaga, Mirigu , Sirigu Yua and Nabango , in the Kasena Nankana municipality and Kasena Nankana West District of the Upper East Region .
She therefore appealed to the youth, traditional and other opinion leaders of the affected communities to use due process to resolve the conflict because arms do not build communities, but only destroys.
Source:mywordfmonline.com Gaspard Ayuureneeya