The College for Community and Organisational Development (CCOD) has signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Jaksally Development Organisation, a non-governmental organisation based in Bole in the Savannah Region.
The five-year partnership is to among others promote the field of OD education and interest in the use of OD facilitation for change and research among the respective entities.
Speaking during the signing of the MoU in Wa, the President of CCOD, Dr. Gabriel Gbiel Benarkuu explained that the College is dedicated to training appreciative leaders who can transform their communities and become self-reliant.
The President of the College for Community and Organisational Development, Dr. Gabriel Benarkuu pointed out that over the past ten years, the institute has been organising OD conferences to ensure that Africa knows about the new knowledge of grooming.
He said it’s high time Africa discover the root causes of successes rather than the causes of failures. He observed that African leaders are found 80% of the time discussing problems facing the continent rather than finding solutions.
Mr Benarkuu stressed the need to discover alternatives for the problems confronting the continent.
He said Ghana has the requisite resources and need to facilitate the people to discover, and empower them to have sustainable transformation to be self-reliant.
Dr. Benarkuu identified technical education as key to transforming the lives of graduates and not theory based education. He called on the government and other NGOs to resource technical institutions to train self-reliant graduates.
“I just finished reviewing the Ghana Education reforms from 1967 till date but I have not spotted anything that talks about facilitation so if you can teach children without facilitative approaches then what kind of transformation can you bring?” he questioned.
“It is only when you use expressional models that will transform people into thinking creatively but you are not using that, of cause people will justify that it is expensive, but that is the best way. If you want sustainability, facilitation is expensive because you use a lot of materials in demonstrating and teaching but that is the best way to go.”
“It’s better to do that to transform people to create jobs and when people create more jobs, they also create employment and when they create employment, they pay taxes and it goes back to government,” Dr Benarkuu noted.
The Program Coordinator of Jaksally Development Organisation, Jeremiah Seidu, who also initialled the MoU said education should be based on one’s ability to do something practical and not by examination.
“We thought about it long time ago, that certifying people based on what they can do and not certifying people based on examination.”
“Some of our women are more professionals for example in beekeeping, inter-cropping, agro-forestry but because they have not been to Universities like Central University, University of Ghana, nobody recognize them.”
“I hope this partnership is going to bring those people on board and these are people who we are going to facilitate and we will bring them as facilitators so that they can make a change. We think that education should be based on what I can do and not by examination,” Mr Seidu added.
Mr Seidu described the partnership with CCOD as a dream come true saying they want to set up social institution where people go and study in their own languages and identify problems within their communities and addressing them.
Dr. Bernakuu said CCOD in collaboration with Jaksally Development Organization will work together to bring more NGOs on board.
He projected that more students will be produced in 2021 with limited space in tertiary institutions. However, CCOD is working hard to expand its infrastructure to absorb graduates from the Free Senior High Schools.
Dr. Benarkuu indicated that CCOD operates a three-pronged approach by empowering people to discover, facilitating to transform and imbuing in trainees positive psychology for them to cultivate what he termed “the sustainability mindset”.
The proposals for the partnership include to award certificates to deserving students and participants trained under the AOC, Agreement of Collaboration; to promote exchange programme in the field of OD; and to raise funds with NGOs and donors for sustainable projects in Northern Ghana.
Story filed by Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo & Dennis Bebane.
