Low-income working women and female household heads are among the most vulnerable groups in greater Accra. They are generally able to meet caloric consumption needs, but are very vulnerable to income or price shocks, and sacrifice investment in health and education in order to meet consumption needs. The best options for reducing women's vulnerability is to increase their income earning potential by improving access to credit and skills training, and by improving the regulatory environment, says this paper from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

I am happy to make this presentation on behalf of the National Coalition of Civil Society Groups against Mining in Ghana's forest reserves. The presentation I am about to make focuses on concerns we as a coalition have about national decision-making efforts for mining in Ghana's forest reserves. Knowing that we are all interested in the sustainable development of our natural resources we are hopeful that by the end of the presentation many would see our campaign as justified and worthy of support. The Government of Ghana has declared her intention to release portions of Ghana's closed forest reserves for mining. Five mining companies are already lined up for mining leases to exploit mineral resources in the forest reserves. Therefore, we the Civil Society Coalition against mining in forest reserves are concerned about this decision by the government, and we call on her to withdraw the decision and to revoke those mining leases if already granted.

The Otumfuo Education Fund (OEF) has collected a total of 2.2 billion cedis cash from individuals and organisations since it was established in 1999. Nana Brefo-Boateng, Executive Secretary of the Fund, announced this at a press briefing in Kumasi on Monday to launch Otumfuo Education Fund Week and Fund Raising Dinner Dance, starting from June 2.

Lecturers are required to teach the following courses at the Academy of Screen arts - a new and exciting Film School in Ghana: Acting, Directing, Presentation and Anchoring, Set Design, Costume and Make-up, Animation, Pre-production, Post production, Music and Dance, Voice and Diction, Film History.

As statistics on maternal mortality ratio indicate that about 40% of women die through childbirth, the deputy Health minister Moses Dani-Baah has reiterated government's commitment and determination to improve access to health delivery among women.

The Ghanaian government has successfully prosecuted and convicted two former ministers, a senior civil servant and a foreigner for their roles in a $20 million rice project which left Ghana with a $20 million debt and no rice. The foreigner - in addition to bagging a jail term - was also ordered to refund $20 million.

Hundreds of families and guests came to Adidome, Ghana, on 10 November, 2001 to celebrate with 128 women freed from years of forced labour in the service of local priests. The women were graduating from a vocational centre run by a local non-governmental organisation, International Needs Ghana (ING), which helps women reclaim normal lives in their communities.

The Atua Government Hospital has been selected as one of the health institutions to administer anti-retroviral drugs to full-blown AIDS patients as from May this year. The drugs are expected to boost the health of AIDS patients to ensure prolonged lifespan. The hospital is the only one selected for the pilot project on the administration of Nevirapine, the drug for the prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS positive women during labour as well as the newly-born baby.

After the IMF intensified retaliatory measures on Ghana for failing to comply with its requirements, the country appears eager to appease the Washington institution, probably at a high social cost. Having been portrayed as an adjustment success story in the 1990s, Ghana was denied renewal of IMF financial assistance at the end of 2002 after failing to implement conditions in its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility agreement with the Fund. Now, to get the funding renewed, the government is implementing conditions for which Ghanaian people will have to pay a high price.

The government through the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment has signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) to eliminate child labour and child trafficking in the country.

The Government of Japan is to extend a total amount of US $ 67,614 (approximately ¢567,959,600) under the Japanese Government Grant Assistance for Grassroots Projects (GGP) to three communities for the construction of students hostels and a clinic respectively.

Free the Fishing Boys - A US-funded programme, which aims to assist and return to their families more than 1,200 children trafficked for forced labour in the Central and Volta regions of Ghana is making good progress.

This paper examines the welfare outcomes of migrants and non-migrants in Ghana in the years 1991/2 and 1998/9 using nationally representative survey data. The results reveal that migration is a common feature of household behaviour in Ghana in both years, with over 50% of individuals migrating at some point within their lives.

Dozens of bulldozers and excavators belonging to five multinational mining companies operating in Ghana are poised to tear apart thousands of hectares of forest reserves in the Ashanti, Western and Eastern Regions of the country, if the government gives them approval to haul out what they describe as rich deposits of gold beneath the forests.

Lack of portable drinking water in certain rural areas of the country has made the eradication of Guinea worm infection difficult. According to the Minister for Health, Dr. Kwaku Afriyie, even though the disease has been decreasing over the past two years and is now confined to only three regions, the unavailability of potable drinking water has made the eradication of the disease difficult.

Ghana has prioritised health, education, sanitation, infrastructure, local government administration and agriculture under its poverty reduction strategy for 2003, the Finance Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo told Parliament on Thursday. Reading the 2003 budget speech, the minister said that funds to support the poverty reduction strategy would be provided under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC).

Mining operations in Ghana have displaced more than 50,000 indigenous people without just compensation, employed less than 20,000 Ghanaians (due to over-reliance on expatriate workers), burned villages, illegally detained activists, raped women and continually denied the culture. Ghana's Human Rights and Administrative Justice Committee has recently reported "overwhelming evidence of human rights violations occasioned by the mining activities, which were not sporadic but a well established pattern common to almost all mining communities." Now one of the world's largest gold mining companies, Denver-based Newmont, will be granted licenses for two new operations in Ghana. This dangerous precedent will allow Newmont to enter Ghana for the first time and pour in an initial US$450 million to exploit Ghanaian land, law and people, says a report from Drillbits & Tailings, a newsletter published by Project Underground, which works to support the human rights of communities resisting mining and oil exploitation.

An American who went to Ghana to study percussion eventually came back drumming up support for a different cause - to give people around the world access to the Internet and the economic opportunities it provides. So far, Ethan Zuckerman, founder of the Geekcorps, has done rather well. His Massachusetts-based NGO has established four country offices in the developing world that match high-tech volunteers with businesses requiring information and communication technology (ICT). Even if he is not quite the pied piper, Zuckerman has managed to gather a large following of geeks behind him -- at the moment there are 1,300 techies on Geekcorps' waiting list wanting to volunteer.

UNICEF Ghana initiated an integrated early childhood development (IECD) pilot project in mid-2002 to reach out to deprived children and their caregivers in Konkomba market, a slum in the capital city of Accra. The project involves partnership and network building among various stakeholders including governmental agencies, NGOs, and the media. Key strategies include bringing child minders and parents together to understand the needs and rights of the children under their care. To this end, project activities include empowerment and capacity building of parents, child minders, and the community through education and support for proper child care.

One hundred and fifteen students of Junior and Senior Secondary Schools in the Kwahu-South District in the Eastern Region have benefited from the Sikkens Education Trust Fund.