TEERE LOCAL GOVERNMENT FORUM 2

Background of Project!

TEERE Local Government Forum (TLGF) is TEERE’s flagship project that provides an informal platform for citizens at all levels (community, district, regional and national) to participate in local governance and local government policy reforms in Ghana.

The forum ensures that citizens engage themselves on their role in their development and how they can influence decision making in governance from local to national level. It also provides opportunity for duty bearers such as chiefs, assembly members, government functionaries etc. to account to citizens on a regular basis. In particular, t he forum enables social groups particularly the disadvantaged and vulnerable such as women, disabled, the aged, ethnic minorities, traditional authorities to be included in the local government system.

Project Scope

Bongo and Nabdam Districts of the Upper East Region.

To encourage and sustain citizen participation, and influence policy reforms and its implementation TEERE established the independent neutral TEERE Local Government Forum (TLGF) to generate discussions that will lead to policy improvement and acceleration of the decentralisation Process. To facilitate the process, the forum is organised at community, district and regional levels. This approach enables TEERE to facilitate community meetings involving community members and their leadership to discuss their development and how they can participate in decision making process at the community level. At the district level, we encourage regular interactions among citizens and citizen groups among themselves and meetings between citizens and public officials. The emphasis at this stage is inclusiveness in decision making.

The district level forums also make it possible for stakeholders who include experts and practitioners to engage on policy reforms at that level and how to influence a change. Citizens also discuss issues to engage other districts at the regional forum. The regional level forum allows participants from the districts to share experiences and best practices with the view to improving their own performances and to work together to influence policy change at the national levels. The regional forum is particularly focused on promoting an interaction among citizens, experts and practitioners in local government. This is achieved on three levels: monthly round table discussions on topical issues in local governance; a forum for citizens, experts and practitioners, and a civil society in local government forum. The TLGF requires support from CSOs and other citizen groups to advocate for the issues that are raised at the various forums. The CSO forum also enables the organisation to sell the TLGF concept to their organisations and to encourage them to adopt or adapt it to their programmes. Finally, at the beginning of the programme we engage our stakeholders for their input and include them in the planning process to make them own it. TEERE works with the Local Government Service Secretariat (LGSS), the National Association of Local Government Authorities (NALAG), Regional Coordinating Councils (RCC), District Assemblies, Regional House of Chiefs and Heads of Government institutions. The engagement of these stakeholders provides for the learning and sharing of ideas and experiences amongst them. This leads to the transfer of knowledge among experts, officials and institutions not just about the TLGF Concept but best practises within our context. Informed by this understanding, the project intends identifying such groups by using participatory methods and tools to target and facilitate their inclusion and benefit in all project deliverables.