Twenty-four (24) Civil Society leaders have graduated from the 2018 – 2019 STAR Ghana Foundation (SGF) Leadership Development Programme (LDP) for Civil Society Organization (CSOs). The final module of the Programme and Graduation took place in Ho. The year-long training programme which ran from December 2018 to September 2019 was delivered by Nkum and Associates, renowned management, organization and leadership development consulting firm.

The LDP was used to support the development of competencies of CSO leaders, with the aim of increasing their organizational sustainability in the context of civil society complexities, changing aid and development landscape in Ghana.

According to the Programmes Director of STAR Ghana Foundation, Mr Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, “the Foundation recognizes that it cannot realize its vision without a strong civil society and new cadres of leaders in Ghana”. The training is therefore expected to leverage a vibrant civil society that is engaging constructively in development work, and contributing to transformational solutions to Ghana’s development challenges.

CSO leaders that participated in LDP 2018/2019 included: AWLA, ICDP, SILDEP, Songtaba, CEWEFIA, Odekro PMO, SAVE-Ghana, RISE GHANA, CEDEP, PTSIF, iWatch Africa, CALID, CDA Ghana, ASUDEV, SNG, SMAid International, and VEReF.

At end of the programme, participants were confident that the new skills and the awareness acquired would enable them to steer their organizations to sustainability and impacts for their communities and Ghana as a whole. Perhaps the best assurance to STAR Ghana Foundation is captured in the views of representatives of two beneficiary organizations.

According to Albertina, the representative of Volta Educational Renaissance Foundation (VEReF), her new awareness of “agility and ‘complex adaptive systems’ would enable VEReF to transform its responses quickly to changing context, to achieve sustainability”.

To CEWEFIA, the new knowledge would enable CSOs sustainability, as “leaders would not be afraid to leave or exit when the applause is still on, and believe that organizations will thrive beyond their them as pacesetters/founders’’. In the views of Cosmos Kwame Akorli from AWLA, the training has ‘adequately enabled him to support his organization to thrive and impact the voiceless in the society’.

About the 2018/19 Leadership Development Programme (LDP)

According to Reverend John Nkum, the Leadership Development Programme seeks to raise leaders for today who embrace multiple realities, difference, minority perceptions, who give value to what is not routine and bring into their leadership the concept of wholism, so every part and segment of society is enabled to grow and become their best.

This is a little different from the traditional leadership programs that seek to reinforce hierarchy, authority, power and direction which traditional leadership models, tend to use the leader as the agent of change rather than a facilitator who enables others to participate in the leadership act.

So, the LDP concept is that leadership is a collective process that happens in the spaces of individuals where everybody plays a leadership and followership roles depending on the event being enacted. That is the dominant motive for the LDP.

He noted that the group of participants that STAR Ghana Foundation assembled from the grant partners – executives, middle-level managers and directors provided the opportunity to work with practitioners. So, “a lot of the work we did in the LDP was experiential learning and not theoretical discourse.

It was to enable people to practice and embrace difference, and multiple realities, how to be whole and function from that paradigm of wholism where the whole is different from the sum of its parts”. He noted that program was helpful in enabling leaders to shift from the old perceptions and paradigms to the current situation participants reported of being able to use themselves as the subject of leadership rather than the role they play.

He was very optimistic that participants would use themselves to bring change not only to the organizations they work in, but also as civil society as a whole where people in civil society will begin to function from that perceptive of being inclusive in order to allow others to flourish.

Rev Nkum indicated that as the STAR Ghana program ends and results in the creation of the STAR Ghana Foundation, Nkum Associates hopes to be part of the transition process and the establishment of proper functioning civil society structures capable of pushing governance, transparency and accountability forward.