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The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) is urging the media to use their watchdog role in enhancing open governance, transparency and social accountability through critical reporting at the local level. The GACC in collaboration with the Local Governance and Decentralization Program with funding support from USAID is implementing a project on the theme, �Enhancing the Capacity of Civil Society Organizations to Effectively Engage District Assemblies to Ensure Transparency and Accountability.� The project which is to be piloted in two districts of the Western region namely Sefwi Wiaso and Bibiani Districts is to be completed in 14 months, (May 2014 to July 2015). At a media interaction on the way forward for promoting social accountability and inclusive development at the local level, the communications officer of GACC, Beauty Emefa Narteh said the move is to engage the media to spread the gospel. �In the light of this, the GACC is organizing a capacity building workshop on the role of the media on social accountability for selected journalists drawn from the electronic and print media houses comprising radio, newspaper, television and online.� According to her, the objective of the event was to increase the understanding of journalists on the project to enable them provide increased visibility for the project and its outcome through respective media platforms and also to empower journalists with information to fight corruption and promote transparency and good governance in their reportage. �This platform was to help the journalists to build their capacities to effectively monitor and improve governance at the local level. Governance must be people and policy driven, as well as development oriented, so as to ensure ownership of any developmental process at all levels. Likewise, local governance must be participatory, accountable and transparent since that forms the basis for ascertaining national development.� According to her, �Ghana�s decentralization policy is premised on the fact that development is intended to be shared responsibility of the central government, Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), civil society organizations, CSOs, the private sector and communities. She said provisions have been made for popular participation in development, inter-sectorial and institutional coordination and that this has many a time affected Ghana�s development process owing to the lack of effective engagement with all relevant stakeholders. �Civil society organizations have been one of the driving forces of Ghana�s development at both national and local levels. Informed by their thematic areas of operations, CSOs at the local level operate closely with the people and impact their lives in several ways,� she added. Mrs. Narteh indicated that, many a time their work is hampered in several ways owing to the lack of capacity to effectively engage stakeholders such as the MMDAs. �This is further worsened by the non-existence or rather poor relationship and mistrust between CSOs and the assembly which equally affects the level of collaboration among these parties.� The objective she said is to strengthen civil society capacity to influence local government priorities and monitor implementation of their annual action plan. Improve trust between MMDAs and CSOs at the local level.