CIDA asked to extend District Capacity Building Project

Wa, July 26 GNA - Mr Ambrose Dery, Upper West Regional Minister, on Tuesday appealed to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to consider extending the District Capacity Building Project (DISCAP) for two more years in order to consolidate the capacity building activities that had been initiated in the three Northern Regions. Apart from being used to consolidate the gains made, he said, the period could also be used to document lessons learnt, to enable other projects to benefit from them.

Mr Dery was addressing this year's DISCAP conference at Wa, which drew about 100 participants from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

The participants were made up of District Coordinating Directors, Planning Officers, Gender Desk Officers and District Environmental Health Officers.

The two-day conference would evaluate the progress made in the strategies adopted in the implementation of the Project and review the findings made at a previous conference.

Mr Dery commended DISCAP for doing a lot for the three Northern Regions in terms of capacity building, gender equity, water systems management and environmental hygiene.

He said the Project was complementing Government's efforts at human resource development, which was one of the pillars of the current Government's development agenda.

The Regional Minister said the Government believed that there could not be effective development without developing the human resource base of the nation, and any project geared towards human resource development was laudable.

Ms Kathy Durand, a Resource Person, said collaboration of DISCAP and stakeholders was not enough and, therefore, called for an increase in the visibility of collaboration efforts with other agencies.