Mr Salifu Issifu Kanton, Executive Director of Community Development Alliance (CDA) Ghana, has called for all hands to be on deck to help end the menace of Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

He advised children and young people to report people who perpetrated any act of abuse against them to their colleagues, parents, teachers, or the elderly to help curb the canker.

“If you are a schoolgirl, your class teacher is touching your breast or your buttocks; if you are a boy, your madam invites you to her office and asks you to remove her button or zip, speak it out, tell the schoolteacher, tell the head teacher, tell the proprietor and that is how we can stop it,” he explained.

Mr Kanton said this in Wa at the weekend during a panel discussion on the topic: “Unite Against Gender-Based Violence: Leave No Woman or Girl Behind” to climax the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.

The event, organised by the Children and Youth in Broadcasting (CYIB)-Curious Minds, was also to launch the Wa chapter club of the CYIB-Curious Minds on the theme: “Harnessing and Catalyzing the Potentials of Young People for National Growth.”

The event was characterised by poetry and drama performances that spoke against GBV in all forms geared towards fighting the menace.

School children, stakeholders including representatives of the Department of Gender, Department of Children, and Department of Social Welfare, and youth groups among others attended the event.

“We are all part of it. Children can help address Gender-based Violence, the adults can do it, but the beginning point is, let’s talk about it. When we don’t talk about it, we can’t find a solution to it”, Mr Kanton explained.

Chief Inspector Madam Stella Niabi, the Station Officer of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), Upper West Region, indicated that men also suffer GBV but were unwilling to report or speak about it due to the fear of social ridicule.

“Most men go through so much emotional and psychological abuse. The men are very quiet and are dying within. Some women take men through torture, “she said.

Madam Niabi noted that most men endure the abuses they suffered due to their ego and cited two reported cases of GBV against men, where in one incident a woman was sexually abusing the man, stressing the need for men to also speak out about abuses against them.

She also advised the children to defend and protect their bodily rights saying, “Each of you should be assertive when it comes to your body”.

Mr David Aburabura, the Deputy National Coordinator of CYIB-Curious Minds, noted that the organisation had chalked successes in producing resourceful personalities who were actively contributing to development both at the national and international levels.

He explained that the ability of the group to expand and engage more young people and children across the country would help curb the issue of young people engaging in social vices.

“We want to get more young people to join us in our advocacy to make sure that children’s rights are recognised and children are thrilled up to be able to demand their rights responsibly”, he explained.

Alhaji Dasaana Adamu, the Proprietor of Bomandi Preparatory School, who chaired the occasion, advised the young people and children to be confident in expressing their views and advocating their interests responsibly.

Mr Adamu, who was also a former Wa West District Chief Executive, called on parents to take the welfare of their children seriously to ensure they developed into responsible adults.

An Environmental Advocate and CEO of Free Nation Movement Ghana, Nana Nontwiri Opoku Castro, has called for the need for Ghana to encourage domestic waste segregation to address sanitation challenges in the country.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on sanitation challenges in Kasoa in the Awutu-Senya East Municipality, he noted that an aggressive approach was the way to go.

The Awutu-Senya East Municipality with its district capital at Kasoa and adjoining communities are bedevilled with sanitation issues mostly heaps of refuse on the streets and in market places.

He said, waste segregation was key in waste management as it would help to reduce communicable diseases and floods in the capital cities across the country.

He said, it was possible with intensive and consistent public education to encourage the populace to practice waste segregation.

Mr Nontwiri said segregated waste recycling plant could provide employment for the teeming youth and the government and other stakeholders must invest in that venture.

He stated that there were available melting machines for melting plastic wastes that government could purchase for recycling purposes to manufacture products or sell to companies to manufacture plastic products.

According to him, currently, the Chinese purchases the few collected plastics, melt and export to manufacture products.

He pointed out that encouraging waste segregation would also help avoid flood, create employment, improve agriculture and quality health.

Mr Nontwiri emphasized that aggressive approach was required to tackle sanitation in the municipality by committing resources including funding, transport, and a dumping site.

He said this would facilitate provision of waste bins, collection of domestic refuse and safe disposal, thereby, enhancing clean environment.

In addition, the assembly could effectively support an environmental taskforce to arrest individuals who dump domestic wastes on the streets and in the market places and punished to serve as a deterrent to others, he said.

He added that, Free Nation Movement Ghana, would be launching an initiative dubbed; “Operation Adiibekilwu” to wit “Someone will catch you” to undertake activities including collection of wastes and monitoring hotspot to arrest individuals who dump wastes in the streets and market places.

Creativity, surprises, ingenuity, and enthusiasm have been the real experience at the 2022 edition of the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFAC) currently taking place in Cape Coast.

Consequently, there is no end in sight for the entertainment and excitement characterising the biennial festival, which is expected to end on Friday, December 16, 2022.

Word on the street after the spectacular performances by the Western, Oti and Upper East Regions last Sunday was that “it may not get higher than this.”

The Western North, Northern, Volta and Bono East Regions raised the bar several feet higher on Monday afternoon through to the evening, with series of sensational festival simulations and indigenous dances when they took their turns at the national event.

The various troops turned many heads and kept the audience at the edge of their seats as these regions displayed their cherished cultures.

It was all applause and cheers until the last performance of the day which the audience wished never ended.

The Modest Dance Group from Sefwi Chirano in the Western North Region set the ball rolling with the “Dansuom” cultural dance in their predominantly yellow, black, and white multi-coloured outfits.

The performance featured all groups of ages including children as young as five years and the aged who danced to amazing sounds of drumming and singing.

Alongside the display, a story was told of a hunter who discovered monkeys playing melodious music with a calabash capsized in water in the 1960s.

The hunter sent the idea home when he fetched water into a basin and capsized a calabash in it.

He then beat the calabash with his hands to produce a melodious sound which was later developed into a traditional rhythm and dance of the Sefwi people known as “Dansuom.”

The euphoria at the Adisadel School Park grew even stronger when the Yamgari Naa Yili Cultural Troupe, the resident troop for Northern Regional Centre for National Culture (CNC) took their turn.

Draped in the traditional fugu outfit, the all-men group turned, twisted, struck metallic rods and shook hands as they did the Takai dance with drumming and singing.

At this point, Mion Sabaa Naa Inusah Amidu who could not contain his excitement was forced out of his seat by the inspiring performance to demonstrate his dancing skills amid cheers from the Ministers of State and the audience gathered.

The Takai dance is a royal dance which promotes unity.

The troupe returned later with a second dance, ‘Jera,’ a thanksgiving dance usually to celebrate bumper harvest.

The name of the troop, “Yamgari Naa” translates as “wiser than the king” and they can perform nearly every traditional dance in Ghana.

As a model group, they train many institutions including schools and have visited several countries across the world to perform.

Before long, the Volta Region followed with a sensational display of the Adevu (hunting drum), a hunters’ dance by the Lume Adevu Troupe, from Lume, in the Ho Municipality.

With fantastic props – buckets and sacks with planted trees for forest, a plastic cheetah for wild animal, and muskets for guns, the hunters served a dramatic simulation.

Adevu is performed to celebrate and hail the bravery of hunters who use supernatural powers to kill wild animals that go into the community to harm women and children.

Dziedzorm New Generation Borborbor Group from the region also came to fan the flames with another thrilling display.

Borborbor is a recreational dance that is performed mainly for entertainment but in recent times, it is performed at funerals to assuage the pain of the bereaved.

Almost as if the best was saved for the last, an incredible simulation of Nkoranza Sessiman’s Fokuo Festival by the Bono East CNC resident group, ‘Bonokyempem Agofomma’  took the euphoria to another level.

The energy-filled drama which used fantastic props to aptly mimic the actual festival and tell a vivid story, received cheers and applause at every move of muscle by the group.

The festival is celebrated annually in the month of February by the chiefs and people of Nkoranza Sessiman in the Nkoranza Traditional Area to remember and honour the “Ntoa god” in Sessiman for its supportive role in their war of conquest.

It also signifies the strength and unity of the people of Nkoranza to fight for a common goal.

The Bonokyempem Agofomma aims to preserve and promote the Akan culture in the Bono Region.

NAFAC, Ghana’s biggest cultural festival is celebrated every two years on rotational basis to provide a platform to showcase the diversity and richness in the country’s ethnic and regional cultures to stimulate peace and unity.

This year’s celebration, which also marks the 60th anniversary of the festival is on the theme: “Reviving Patriotism, Peace and Unity through Cultural Diversity for Sustainable Development.”

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo opened the festival last Saturday.

Later, on Tuesday, the Upper West, Ahafo, Eastern and North East regions will take their turns to project their rich cultural heritage.