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A one week Certificate Programme in Local and Indigenous Knowledge for Community-Driven Water, Sanitation and Hygiene began in Koforidua on Monday. The Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organizational Development (CIKOD) in collaboration with the Institute for Development Studies of the University of Cape Coast, is organizing the workshop with sponsorship from Water Aid-Ghana. The workshop aims at inspiring participants involved in Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH), initiatives to look at communities as rich resources for generating dialogue and action for positive change in WASH. The workshop would also introduce the concept of endogenous development, an approach to social and economic justice that �starts from within� and ensures initiatives are truly community-driven and based on their strengths that contribute to their own socio-cultural, economic and political development. Participants at the workshop include heads of WASH programmes, directors and senior staff in community-based organizations and non-governmental organizations (ngos) among others. Dr Henry Seidu Daannaa, Minister of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, in opening the workshop, commended CIKOD on their efforts to enhance research into indigenous knowledge. He noted that in order to achieve any form of development there was the need for scientific knowhow saying �our effort to achieve sustainable community development will be very much enhanced if we undertake scientific research into our indigenous knowledge of traditional/customary ways of doing things�. Dr Daannaa said training workshops like this helped in enhancing not only indigenous knowledge and community development but in fact national development in the fullest meaning. �Our focus as a nation must be to examine our indigenous skills with a view to sharpening our indigenous knowledge and thereby avail ourselves with these local methods or techniques in the solution of problems within our local communities�. He appealed to the participants to take opportunity of the training workshop and make the best out of it. �Let us see this as a time to share our experiences with one another, regarding the application of indigenous knowledge and skills in our respective local communities,� he added. Dr Daannaa said the ultimate objective of all Ghanaians was to be able to sit up and address with all seriousness the question of our indigenous knowhow or cultural potential. He said against that background, it was the hope of the Ministry and for that matter the Government that all the stakeholders including the academic and research institutions would join in the march on the road ahead to examine with a view to improving upon local indigenous capabilities.