WOMAASHI (We press on): Communications and Activism in the Ada Songor Salt Women’s Association, Ghana

Abstract: The purpose of the project is to create a model for improved and expanded participation in an activist network, The Ada Songor Salt Women's Association (ASSWA) by enhancing communications. ASSWA is an organization of Brave Women (Yihi katseme) salt winners from the Songor lagoon area in south eastern Ghana. They are committed to ensuring that the lagoon and its harvest is a resource for all. ASSWA has found over time that to defend the lagoon and the livelihood of the 45 communities around it, requires that they articulate the experiences and demands of women and marginalized members of the community. This study exmines communications of the ASSWA network within the context of Communications for Change. describes the dialectic within the network, how members discuss issues and resolve differences, how they define and articulate their programmes and demands. It examines if the mobilisation and activism of poor rural women can challenge the dominant discourses of traditional development and patriarchy. Key to learning is abstraction, the linking of issues and abstracting of the problematic causative mechanisms, the project studies this process within the ASSWA context by looking at how the network and its members link their struggles with broader social movements within Ghana and beyond. The continued agency of the ASSWA is challenged by the poverty of the community within which it operates and by its ability to communicate effectively locally, nationally and internationally. As it stands now, the organisation is active but long-term sustainability may be compromised by the lack of dialogic interactions at all levels of engagement. This paper creates a model (theory) for more active participation in based on their identified priorities, needs and requirements, in such a way as to promote ‘power participation’. The research was conducted using a critical realist ontological framework and qualitative interview research methodologies