Human rights campaigner wins international award

Sunyani, Sept. 30, GNA - Mr. Raphael Godlove Ahenu Jr. founder and Chief Executive Officer of Africa Media Aid (AFRIMA), a Sunyani-based human rights and social development media organization, has won this year's Sheila Mckechnie International Campaigner Award.

The award is presented every year by Sheila Mckechnie Foundation, a charity organization based in the United Kingdom (UK). For his prize, Mr. Ahenu, a journalist at the Brong-Ahafo Regional Office of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation in Sunyani, will attend a one-week training course on advocacy in November the UK. The award recognizes the outstanding contribution that contemporary generations of campaigners are making towards achieving social, environmental and economic justice both in the UK and across the globe. Mr. Ahenu won the award through a campaign he is undertaking to ensure that water and sanitation facilities are provided for 100 communities, schools and health centres in Brong-Ahafo and Ashanti regions by 2015.

Through radio shows and other publicity methods the award winner mobilizes communities to demand their rights to such facilities. The campaigner support manager of Sheila Mckechnie Foundation, Mrs. Clare Parry, told newsmen in Sunyani "this year's award finalists are more diverse than ever".

She said organizers of the award received 70 international applicants through the internet and that five were short listed. "The CEO of AFRIMA was adjudged the best by a panel of judges after interviews", Mrs. Parry said and that those short listed were from Uganda, Swaziland, India and Ghana. Mr. Ahenu expressed gratitude to the organizers for recognizing his contribution towards achieving one of the Millennium Development Goals.

He said his NGO would intensify the Access to Clean Water and Sanitation facilities campaign to ensure that rural communities were provided with such facilities. Mr. Ahenu said a survey had shown that many schools and rural communities in Brong-Ahafo and Ashanti regions lacked toilets and assured that AFRIMA was working hard to raise funds to provide the facility to such needy schools and communities.