Over the weekend, BudgIT Ghana organised a Community Champions Hangout engagement in the Northern Region. Held on Saturday, 11 October 2025, the engagement brought together scores of community champions, including women, youths, and chiefs in Bimbilla. The event helped to deepen participants’ knowledge on active citizenship and the Tracka platform by BudgIT.
Mr. Fusheini Yussif, Northern Region Coordinator for Tracka kicked off the event with a brief introduction of the BudgIT Ghana team and a general welcoming statement. Following this, Mr. Hamid Abdel-Mumuni, BudgIT Ghana’s Senior Research Officer, provided a comprehensive overview of the Community Champion Hangout. He maintained that the event is a crucial activity of the Tracka Project, intended to reinforce active citizenship by leveraging interactive learning sessions and fun/games to inspire connection and collaboration amongst team members.
In line with this purpose, Peter N. Dolo, a Hebrew University Student Intern at BudgIT Ghana, led an interactive discussion on Active Citizenship as a tool for building a strong democracy. The discussion enhanced participants’ knowledge on what active citizenship is, the core components and different forms of active citizenship, why active citizenship matters and how to become an active citizen. Amongst other things, Dolo emphasised that active citizenship provides a platform for citizens, especially young people, to influence decisions affecting their lives, foster agency and leadership skills, and keep democracy alive and inclusive.
Immediately following Dolo’s presentation, Mr. Hamid Abdel-Mumuni resurfaced with a comprehensive discussion of the Tracka platform and its intersection with active citizenship. Hamid described Tracka as a Civic technology that enables citizens to collaborate, track and give feedback on public projects in their communities, thus setting the stage for advocacy engagement with duty bearers toward upholding accountability in governance. Also, he called on Community Champions to stay engaged and leverage Tracka as a tool to highlight issues affecting their communities and region.
During the discussions, participants raised concerns about the difficulties in accessing public information about the projects in their communities. In response, Mr. Fusheini and Mr. Abdel-Mumuni encouraged the participants to use the Information Act to request for needed information about public projects and other developments in their communities. Lastly, Mr. Fusheini and Mr. Hamid called on community champions to collaborate with the Tracka Regional Officer in their region when making requests for vital information.
Overall, the community champions hangout was engaging and many participants left with a renewed sense of active citizenship and the determination to contribute to making public finance transparent and accessible.