STAR-Ghana, a Multi-donor funded programme aimed improving the accountability and responsiveness of government, traditional authorities and the private sector, on Tuesday, opened a two-day learning event, to provide a platform for reflections and analyses of the results achieved under its media call projects.

The interactive event, which was on the theme: “Media telling its own stories of change”, seeks to among other objectives, strengthen media engagement policy on key issues such as education, health, and governance and also share lessons on Civil Society Organisation (CSO) and media collaborations.

Participants, who include organisations like the Ghana News Agency, TV3, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Coastal TV, Word FM, Global Media Alliance, Citi FM, Diamond FM and Multi TV, among others, would tell the story of the scope of their projects, approaches used in their implementation, results, achievements, challenges and lessons from their experiences.

Mr Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, Programme Manager of STAR-Ghana, explained that the Organisation in its effort to foster better governance of public goods and services, provided support grant to a range of partners made up of CSOs, including the media, and Parliament , to place them in better positions to influence government business and actions.

He said the various beneficiary institutions had over the past 13 months been implementing and executing their respective projects across the country with an overall goal of increasing accountability and responsiveness of government, traditional authorities and private enterprises to Ghanaians.

Mr Amidu said the current project had recorded tremendous success stories, which were worth sharing to bring about the expected change and development with the media being the main advocates.

Mr Jens-Peter Dyrbak, Chairman of the Funders Committee of the Programme, said the Ghanaian media had been too polarized, focusing too much on the political landscape at the expense of developmental issues.

The challenge with the local media, he said, was how to involve the public in their reportage or reporting objectively without being bias.

He, therefore, called for professionalism in their reportage and urged the media to go beyond the reporting of events and speeches, to do detailed analyses of critical developmental issues and events, and also do follow-ups with specific policy actors.

Professor Akilakpa Sawyerr, Chairman of the STAR-Ghana Steering Committee, commended the grant partners and beneficiaries for the tremendous success stories, which he said, were already yielding fruits in areas such as policy changes in contract executions, monitoring and evaluation of government projects, and local awareness of on-going development programmes and projects.

He expressed optimism that the success stories that had emerged from the project would encourage the donors to sustain their funding to expand the programme to another phase.

Ms Lamisi Dabire, Media Officer of STAR-Ghana, who gave a brief background to the media learning event, said the programme identified the weak relationships among non-state actors, particularly the media and CSOs, to ensure the effective implementation of pro-poor development.

It was also a platform, she said, to strategize to ensure implementation outcomes through a Call targeting the media.

She said to strengthen the media’s role as change agents, STAR-Ghana under the broad objective of strengthening media-civil society collaboration for greater transparency, accountability and responsiveness at all levels of governance, awarded grants totaling two million dollars to 21 media organizations.

The projects, she said involved Radio, television and online interventions, with additional support given to the media through strategic opportunity projects.

The purpose of the call was to provide support for the media to work effectively with other CSOs to enhance citizen advocacy for greater monitoring on governance activities at all levels and also to improve media access and voice for all citizens, particularly the poor, socially marginalized, and excluded groups, as well as those living in deprived areas of the country.