Women get help at last in Kulpieni  …as men resolve to assist in domestic chores

Some of the women seated during the training

Men in the Kulpieni electoral area in the Nadowli-Kaleo Dis­trict of the Upper West Region have resolved to assist their wives at home in order for the women to have adequate time to engage in economic activities and have enough rest.

The Assembly Member of the electoral area, Mr Elijah Danyi who made this known to The Spectator, said hitherto, women were left with the task of taking care of the home and the children without assistance from their husbands.

But after series of meetings and training on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGVB), the men now un­derstood their roles at home.

A Unit Committee member for the area, Mr Camillus Zineyele add­ed that men catered for younger children to give women the liberty to prepare meals for the family and said they had also adopted the habit of staying at home to assist their wives.

These insights came to light during a meeting with the monitoring team from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) under the coordination of the Regional Coordinating Coun­cil (RCC) and the sub implementing partners on a project dubbed the 8th Country Project.

The project trained the commu­nity members on SGBV issues with regard to parent-child relationship, teenage pregnancies, early and forced marriages and unpaid care work, among others.

The Unit Committee member stated that before the training, they used to think that house care and house chores were the preserve of women.

“These days we do help our wives at home; we take care of the chil­dren while they cook. Initially a woman will have to carry the child and cook at the same time and we thought that was womanhood but after the training, we have assumed the roles of helpers,” he said.

He again stated that with the help of the community watchdog team that was formed to check immorality among adolescents, immoral meet­ings among the youth had ceased, hence their adolescent children stayed at home to assist their par­ents with the chores.

Another community member, Vida Gaaganaah said that due to sensiti­sation by the project implementers, the young men in the community had mobilised to construct a block to be used for issues of maternal health in the Kulpieni electoral area.

The community-initiated block, she said when completed would fa­cilitate the work of the prospective midwife who would be sent to the community to work with pregnant women.

Madam Gaaganaah stated that be­fore the training, pregnant women had to walk for between 10-15 kilo­metres (km) to Nanville for antena­tal and other healthcare services.

She added that sometimes when pregnant women were in labour and there was no tricycle, it was diffi ­cult conveying them to the health centre with a motorbike but said that after the sensitisation, the men were able to secure the services of a midwife from the other community who visited Wednesdays to attend to pregnant women at a designated location.

According to the Assembly Mem­ber, the building was therefore to enhance the work of the midwives who visited the community and provide some form of privacy to the pregnant women.

He added that the community had started consulting some stakehold­ers to assist them secure a perma­nent health worker and minor work equipment for the block they were constructing to ensure that it served its intended purpose.

 From Lydia Darlington Fordjour, Kpaala