Spotlight on FAWE:
Changing Attitudes through Radio Programming on FM 105.9
Since January 2004, CIRCLE partner FAWE has been implementing a girls' education project in the Nsaba Educational Circuit, Ghana. Through the provision of teaching and learning materials, training, advocacy, scholarships, and awareness-raising on the issues of child labor and education, FAWE encourages at-risk children, and girls in particular, to enrol, persist and achieve in educational programs.
In 2005, FAWE Ghana launched a radio transmission network to enhance its advocacy for girls' education. FAWE realized that by using radio, it could reach approximately 80% of the rural population. Using participatory project design methods, FAWE collaborated with 17 schools and 60 needy girls to develop the following program schedule: 2005 program line up:
  1. The importance of educating girls
  2. Awareness about and protection against HIV/AIDS infection
  3. Education policy and the gender gap
  4. Barriers to girls' education and possible solutions: protection of whole families and communities against HIV/AIDS
  5. Adolescent girls' vulnerability to sexual abuse, violence, and drug abuse and HIV/AIDS infection
  6. Adolescent sexual maturation and early marriages
  7. Adolescent reproductive health issues for students and teachers
  8. Security of girls in school and community – sexual abuse, rape, incest, etc.
  9. Counselling against HIV/AIDS – the work of peer educators
  10. Life Skills and empowerment to say 'NO'
  11. Mentors and Mentoring in leadership, life skills and positive behaviour
  12. Career guidance and counselling
  13. Social and cultural norms and practices harmful to the education of girls: child labor, early marriages, trokosi1 , etc.
  14. Best practices in girls' education
  15. Sacrifices made by people to educate girls
  16. Opportunities available for supporting girls
  17. Strategies for networking in support of girls' education
  18. Giving the Girls a voice today for the future
FAWE also allocated programme time to partner organisations like the Ghana Chapter of the Federation of International Lawyers (FIDA), Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) of the Police Service, National Population Council, the Salvation Army, Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Ghana AIDS Commission, Wisdom Association2 to also discuss health, the environment, nutrition, sustainable agriculture and HIV/AIDS infection.

Results of FAWE's radio broadcasting have been noteworthy: FAWE spread its message to 4 previously-inaccessible rural districts: over 60 village communities and 25 urban commercial centres participated in discussions and debates on developmental issues. In these new, mainly farming districts, the major obstacle to girls' school enrolment is the seasonal farming schedule, which conflicts with the traditional school calendar. The accessibility of radio programming has made it possible for FAWE to consistently advocate, educate and inform approximately 2,500 of these transient beneficiaries.
Update!
Radio sensitization has had an impact in this rural area. Girls were once excluded from schools in order to provide labor on pineapple plantations. It was very common to see trucks loaded with children. After months of advocacy and education using FAWE FM 105.9, local child advocates have noticed a difference. During one of their monitoring visits (November-December 2005) the Circuit Monitoring team inspected the trucks. To their great delight, "No child was found among the adults in the trucks that were heading to the pineapple farms." As one the Circuit Monitoring Team member says, "They know we are monitoring and watching them".
1 A cultural system which allows young girls to be held to ransom by fetish shrines in atonement for "alleged" crimes committed by other relatives
2 The Association of people living with HIV/AIDS whose members serve as resource persons for the Chapter's HIV/AIDS programs.