Early into our partnership with Public Agenda, which bills itself as "Ghana's only advocacy and development newspaper," the publication received an award from the Ghana National Honorary Awards Hall of Fame for being "the best print media" in the promotion of peace during and after the 2008 presidential elections.  CACG said the newspaper won because of its "independent news presentation and analysis, effective monitoring and supervision of electoral activities before, during and after the 2008 elections towards ensuring free, fair, and transparent elections."

Well it wasn't the first award the paper has won for its advocacy journalism, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

After getting a tip from an American missionary couple here, I passed on to the women and children's issues reporter, Ama Achiaa Amankwah, that a well-known television actress here in Ghana, who owns an orphanage in the Accra suburbs, walked off the job, abandoning the orphans. Initial reports were that the owner abandoned the orphanage because she didn't want to operate it under the new government. But after she left, an 8-year-old orphan allegedly sodomized a 6-month-old orphan. We wrote about the story and the other media caught on quickly.

The media attention, lead by Public Agenda, resulted in the government vowing to close nearly half of the country's orphanages, those that are not well -staffed or operating under certain guidelines. So far, they have closed about four. We have no clear idea where the children from those orphanages have gone. Public Agenda is now in the midst on putting together an investigative report on the state of the country's orphanages for early next month.