Ghana not making maximum use of REFLECT in spite of success stories

Category: General Created on Wednesday, 12 September 2012 08:32 Published Date Written by All Ghana News Hits: 210

Accra, Sept. 11, GNA – In spite of the many great success stories of the REFLECT methodology in achieving developmental goals globally, Ghana is still not making the maximum use of the concept.

     Mrs Millicent Akoto, National Coordinator, Pamoja Ghana Reflect Network, told the Ghana News Agency that the methodology, introduced in Ghana in 1997, could be used even by policy makers, especially members of Parliament to achieve the best solutions on critical issues in their constituencies.

     She said, REFLECT (with the acronym – Regenerated Freirian Literacy Empowerment through Community Techniques) is a down-to-earth participatory approach that places emphasis on dialogue and action in achieving results on critical issues identified.

     REFLECT acts as a catalyst for local development based on people’s own agenda and the goals and aspirations of the Freirean philosophy, using participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools like maps, calendars, matrices and diagrams. The graphics are based on the environment within which discussions are conducted.

     The discussions that emanate from the graphics help participants to analyze their environment leading to identification and discussion of challenges, resulting in practical solution for sustainable development. Reflect, therefore, is a right-based innovative approach to youth and adult learning for social change.

     Throwing more light, Mrs Akoto said, “REFLECT allows everybody to express their views and arrive at a consensus to address the challenges confronting them and together everybody owns it.”

     On the literary front, she said, through reflect people who hitherto had no formal education, were now empowered and with or without support had entered the universities and secondary schools by themselves.

     She said REFLECT had enabled people in rural and deprived areas to have the confidence and ability to transact businesses with financial institutions.

     “The highly illiterate ones who do not know how to sign and do not even have the confidence and trust to save their money in the banks or access credit for their small businesses from micro finance institutions are now being able to do that because of the use REFLECT in Ghana today,” Mrs Akoto said.

     She said Pamoja was working hard to create the needed awareness for development workers including district assemblies, members of parliament, and other policy makers to start making the use of REFLECT in seeking solutions to developmental problems and needs.
 
     Mrs Akoto added, today in most vulnerable communities in the Ghana, women most especially the non-literates, had been empowered and were taking their destinies into their own hands undertaking meaningful economic activities to improve their conditions.   

     She said Pamoja Ghana in collaboration with ActionAid Ghana, was therefore taking the sensitization on the very effective participatory social development methodology, to a level where its usage would be maximized in the country.

     At a day’s orientation workshop in Accra to showcase some achievements of the Methodology in various aspects of people’s lives, she said, the media stood in a better position to promote the use of REFLECT in achieving sustainable social development.  

     Pamoja Ghana Reflect Network is a network of youth and adult education practitioners who use mainly ‘Reflect’ and other participatory methods for literacy and development work.

     ActionAid international developed REFLECT in the 1990s through pilot projects in Bangladesh, Uganda and EL Salvador, and is now used by over 500 organisations in over 70 countries worldwide.