By Albert Futukpor
Tamale, Oct. 18, GNA – A capacity building event has been held for adolescent girls and young women, to empower them through mentorship with relevant knowledge in leadership, rights, setting strategic goals, personal development, and communication.
They were further taken through issues of safeguarding, which involved spaces they could use to build networks for information sharing and to inspire others to report abuses.
It was to enable them to address issues, especially sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and challenge social norms, as well as mobilise themselves to push for structural changes at community, district, and regional levels.
The day’s event, held in Tamale with participants drawn from the area, was to celebrate this year’s International Day of the Girl-Child.
It was organised by Norsaac, an NGO, and its consortium partners (Songtaba and GH Alliance) under the Power to Youth project.
Rumanatu Jibrila, the Youth Empowerment Manager at Norsaac, said the International Day of the Girl-Child fitted very well with the Power to Youth project, because it was a call to reflect on how far the girls had come, and some of the strategies to put in place, to ensure their meaningful engagement in society.
The Power to Youth project seeks to ensure young people’s meaningful participation in terms of addressing issues of harmful practices, unintended pregnancies and SGBV in society.
Rumanatu Jibrila encouraged the participants not to give up, but to keep on pushing and build their capacity through whatever available means they found themselves.
She emphasised that “For every young girl, regardless of the challenge you are going through, know that we see you, we hear you. We are still committed to addressing your issues, and we strongly believe that together, we can bring that change that we want in girls, but that change must start from you.”
She advised them to make good use of information they got from the internet, and other social media platforms to build themselves, to enable them to challenge socio-cultural practices that still held them back as young girls.
Mr Mohammed Amidu Alhassan, the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Officer at Songtaba, and Project Manager for Power to Youth Programme at Songtaba, urged the participants to always protect themselves against harm.
He also called for partnerships amongst institutions to safeguard young people.
Miss Fadilatu Yahaya, a level 300 student at the University for Development Studies (UDS) and Women’s Commissioner of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics Students of UDS, who was a participant, said the event inspired her to create networks, interact with other adolescent girls and learn from the experiences of others.
GNA