LEAP group in Obuasi celebrated the international day of the girl child in style by organising an event where girls from schools in Obuasi converged to listen to Inspirational stories from women who have distinguished themselves in their areas of profession. The theme for this year’s celebration was “Empower Girls: Before and After Crises.”
The LEAP group through its Sikapa for Girls project selected role models to share their success stories and inspire the young girls who were present at the event. It was expected that it would boost the morale of the young girls to see vocational skills as an alternative livelihood to formal work skills. The role models included Ms. Marian Mensah of Magmens Coutre, a fashion designer, Ms. Love Konadu, a radio hostess and a gospel music artiste. The rest were Mrs Gladys Mensah Mensah of Gladmens Catering services, Ms Mansah Ayeson of Mansex Saloon and Ms Rita Amoako of Ritee Solutions.
The LEAP Sikapa for Girls is an initiative of the LEAP group that focuses on vocational training for girls and connecting them to ready markets using its network.
The initiative identifies young girls in and around Obuasi and its surrounding communities who are deprived and supports them with alternative livelihood projects as sources of survival. They train girls in Beads Making such as bracelets, necklace, fascinators for shoes, sandals, bags and dresses. The girls are also trained in Fashion Designing in areas such as shawls, scarves, wraps and dresses for both local and international markets. Project beneficiaries are also trained on salesmanship and appropriate ways to save their earnings for the future.
A number of schools participated in the event which included Nana Ponka basic school, Presentation of Our Lady’s school, Sikaman Methodist JHS and Father Murphy senior High school.
Nana Ohene Adu, a social entrepreneur and Director of the LEAP Group stressed on the skills to be highlighted on the day;
“Our choice of vocational skills to be highlighted on today are fashion, hair braiding, catering, beads making and media/song”, she said.
The LEAP school, which is a subsidiary of the LEAP Group, started admissions in Obuasi six years ago and currently has nine classes starting from the creche to primary four.
Read the full speech of the Director of LEAP Group below:
Thank you for coming! Today is the international day of the Girl child … a day set aside by the United Nations (UN) to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face; to promote girls empowerment and fulfilment of their human rights and to celebrate successful emergence of girl role models. This year’s theme for the celebration is EmPOWER girls!
It is in this regard that the LEAP group based in Obuasi – Ghana through its Sikapa for Girls project has selected role models from the community to share their success stories with girls in a deprived mining environment in order to boost morale for vocational skills as alternative livelihood to formal work skills.
LEAP Sikapa for Girls is an initiative of the LEAP group that focuses on vocational training for girls and connecting them to ready markets using its network.
The initiative identifies young girls in and around Obuasi and its surrounding communities who are deprived and supports them with alternative livelihood projects as sources of survival. We train girls in Beads Making such as bracelets, necklace, fascinators for shoes, sandals, bags and dresses and in Fashion Designing such as shawls, scarves, wraps and dresses for both local and international markets. Project beneficiaries are also trained on salesmanship and appropriate ways to save their earnings for the future (fb LEAP Sikapa for girls page).
Our choses vocational skills to be highlighted on today are fashion, hair braiding, catering, beads making and media/song.
Each model will introduce themselves and share their success stories as to how they got to where they are now in their chosen fields of work. Hopefully, we can all learn a lot from them so without wasting much time I will call upon our first role model to set the ball rolling
Thank you.
