The Widows and Orphans Movement, a Non-Governmental Organisation based in the Upper East Region with interest in safeguarding the rights of women and children and other vulnerable groups and sustainable livelihoods in collaboration with Water Aid Ghana have held a participatory community forum at Bongo Beo, a community in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region Region on Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and Water Sanitation and Hygiene and harmful gender practices and ways of addressing them.
The participants that numbered over 60 were drawn from the Beo community and other adjoining communities included Chiefs, community elders, women and young ladies and boys below 19 years.
The forum is an initiative to engage community members and to understand how issues of Mensurtion , Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and Water Sanitation and Hygiene were being handled in the communities by both parents and community leaders. The team also wanted to hear from the people some of the harmful gender practices taking place I’m their communities.
The participatory forum afforded participants the opportunity to express themselves on issues of the purchase and use of condoms, family planning, menstrual pains, low and high blood flow, abortions pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections verbal, physical and sexual abuses.
The participants shared their views on issues of proper use of sanitary Pads and disposal, changing rooms ,water supply and more and the rise in teenage pregnancies. The participants, both women and men spoke about how issues of menstruation were handled in the days of old and how parents molded their children to prevent pregnancies and sexual abuse
The women explained that they received information on how personal hygiene affects Sexual infections in women mostly from their parents and health personnel. On the issue of sexual abuse, the participants discussed that most young ladies fall victims of sexual abuse by older men due to the respect culture for elders in our communities where the victims are mostly obliged to protect the perpetrators from shame, which sometimes result in teenage pregnancies.
The participants shared their views on issues of sexual rights. They discussed and agreed that individuals have the right to their body and can decide who should touch them or not and that spouses and fiancées have no right to the body of the opposite sex except if they will to be touched. They admitted however that in the village, women are subjected to the wills of their husbands and have no right to their body or to decide when to have sex or not.
The Community forum forms part of the Sexual Health and Reproductive Education which is a project that is funded by the Global Affairs Canada and implemented by Widows and Orphans Movement and Water Aid Ghana.The community forum was to enable the team get first hand information on how the isses discussed were being hamdled in the communities .
By: Simon Agana Blessing/mywordfmonline.com