Chief Executive of the Shama District in the Western Region, Mr. Joseph Amoah, has commended the ‘I Am Aware’ project for engaging key stakeholders and providing useful information on the state of service delivery in Shama, which helped the Assembly during its planning and decision making processes.

Lauding the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) for the initiative when he paid a courtesy call on the Center, Mr Amoah who was accompanied by the District Planning Officer Mr. Mahama Abu, said the project has effectively facilitated the Assembly’s planning and budgeting functions.

“The support you provided has enhanced the preparation of the District’s Medium-Term Development Plan for 2018 – 2021 and also provided for the Assembly, a rare opportunity to share the draft plan with stakeholders and seek their input for its finalization,” he said.

Mr. Amoah further indicated that ‘I Am Aware’ is helping the Assembly to engage more effectively with its stakeholders on matters bothering on the development of the District due to the high quality of data they get from the project.

He appealed for CDD-Ghana’s continued assistance to the Shama District Assembly as they set out to implement key strategies to aid citizen participation, promote transparency and accountability in order to deepen good governance and ultimately improve service delivery.

In response, Mr. Awal Mohammed, Team Lead for the ‘I Am Aware’ project, pledged that ‘I Am Aware’ project, through its regional and district partners will continue to engage citizens at the local level, and arm them with the needed information and ideas to empower to demand accountability that contributes to improved social development outcomes in their districts.

The ‘I Am Aware’ project is a non-partisan citizen empowerment campaign instituted to provide free, accessible and user-friendly data on the state of public goods and public service delivery in all 216 districts across the 10 regions of Ghana.

The data covers the state of, and provision of basic education, health, water, sanitation, security, roads and agriculture in the country. The goal of the project is to increase the awareness of citizens, particularly the poor and vulnerable to empower them to engage with duty bearers to ensure that public services are delivered and improved.

Efua Idan Atadja, Communications Officer