Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung@ 40 in Ghana 4.2 Initiatives on Best Practices on Gender Equality Promotion. FES has also been influential in supporting women's groups in Ghana to link their activism with African regional and international initiatives on gender equality promotion. Notable among this have been two important meetings, one on experiences from other countries on promoting women's participation in politics and public life, organised in 2005 and another on gender tools and frameworks in 2006. Those meetings brought together critical actors from across Africa to learn and share best practices as a means of enhancing understanding of issues related to the promotion of women's rights and gender equality. 4.3 Strengthening the Leadership Capacity of Women In Political Parties The FES has also worked with some organisational members of the Women's Manifesto Coalition to implement a modular training programme to strengthen the capacity of women in all the political parties in Ghana. The course which started in 2005 is in its third phase of implementation. The programme is executed within a period of seven(7) months with one session of two(2) days being run each month taking into account the multiple responsibilities of women and the challenges posed by this on their time, energy and resources. As a result of the programme about forty (40) women from all the seven political parties in Ghana have strengthened their knowledge and skills on critical issues of democracy, economics and gender equality. They have also institutionalised an inter-party networking and collaboration relationship among themselves as women as a means of acknowledging their common and differential interests in party politics. Indeed a number of women who have benefited from the training a holding important positions in government today. 32