Ashesi On A Brilliant, Proactive Peace Project

The Ashesi University, aside its outstanding performance in academia, is on an efficacious peace promotion and protection project that has won the appreciation of many, including The New Publisher newspaper.

The University, as a part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), recently brought together Queen Mothers from across the Greater Accra Region, Ghana’s capital,  for  a two-day training in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) practices.

The New Publisher is particularly impressed because of the target audience for this training in ADR: women in traditional leadership.

They are in positions of great influence and they have a strong say in the decisions that affect their local communities.

The Queen Mothers were offered this training barely a week after the world celebrated International Women’s Day, an occasion to observe the progress made towards achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Empowering women in leadership on how to promote and sustain peace in their homes, places of work and communities, is as critically important as economic and social empowerment; yet it is one area of training that has been neglected for long.

Leading the training session was a Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration, Ashesi University, Enyonam C. Kudonoo, who was practical in her illustrations and explanations that it made the training an exciting one and the lessons very easy to understand.

While the rest of the world is overly fixated on political and economic empowerment of women, Ashesi University seem to have the foresight to understand the need to invest into one of the most critical solutions to the problems  of the world: dispute resolution and sustaining peace using women.

If the spouses of the world leaders were well equipped in ADR and they truly believed in it, perhaps, the world would have been a more peaceful place as they would employ every means possible to convince their husbands to use ADR rather than flying war planes into Iraq or Ukraine.

It is not in doubt that Ghana has become a rather politically polarized country where even a Supreme Court ruling on where or not the Deputy Speakers of parliament, when presiding, have the right to be counted as present has created even more tension, one needs not be soothsayer to know that negotiations and compromises would work better in resolving conflicts and litigation should not be the only option.

Ashesi’s consistence in engaging the grassroots of our society, entering our communities and working hand in hand with the real people in the application of ADR as an effective conflict resolution tool is a brilliant initiative worthy of emulation.

This is not the first time Ashesi is investing in such brilliant and practical training of community leaders in ADR and its importance.

Barely some three or so months ago, same University brought together opinion leaders, youth leaders, community leaders and persons of influence from several neighborhoods where violence is not uncommon.

These leaders were taken through an intensive, practical and interactive training in ADR and the feedback is that the training is yielding positive results in their respective communities.

Sustaining global peace does not happen by accident. It is would require a deliberate and concerted effort which should start from our homes and communities.

This practical approach requires constant training and Ashesi University, providing the opportunity for such training is a brilliant proactive approach.

We wish the University the very best in its efforts in this approach.