Civil Society organizations(CSOs) and Coordinators working in the area of Mental Health have received a day’s training aimed at strengthening community-level advocacy and networks to provide COVID-19 information and services for persons with mental health conditions and their caregivers.
The training, held in Accra on Thursday, October 13, formed part of a One- year project being implemented by MindFreedom Ghana with funding from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the United States.
The workshop brought together participants from Greater Accra, Eastern, Central, Oti, and the Volta Region.
Similar Training workshops have been held earlier in the Northern and middle belts of the country, according to MindFreedom Ghana.
In his opening remarks, Mr Dan Taylor, Executive Secretary of MindFreedom Ghana explained that the project has been occasioned by the emergence of COVID-19 and its related issues of COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and the need to improve demand and utilization of the COVID-19 information and services.
The project, according to him, would create community support networks and embark on advocacy activities on mental health and COVID-19 to mobilize demand and utilization of COVID-19 vaccination services and information for persons with mental health conditions and their caregivers.
Mr Taylor said it was for the above reasons that the training was being held to equip the CSOs and the Coordinators with expertise to enable them to support advocacy activities and the establishment of community support networks in their regions and communities moving forward.
He pointed among others that, the project would Strengthen civil society and coordinators to advocate improving mental health services for persons with mental health conditions in the context of COVID-19, adding that the “project activities would be backed by sustained media campaigns to raise awareness on mental health and immunization and garner community interest to support persons with mental illness and their caregivers to access services.”
Mrs. Wendy Abbey, a consultant, who facilitated the workshop, took participants through the types and various stages of advocacy while encouraging them to actively participate in the quest for positive change in the Mental Health sub-sector.
Participants expressed gratitude to the organizers for bringing them together and giving them some tonic for delivery.
By: Mohammed Suleman/ Publicagendagh.com
