The Community Aid for Rural Development (CARD-Ghana), at the weekend, held a capacity-building workshop on female leadership to train and encourage young women and girls to take up leadership roles in society.
A total of 32 female students from six SHSs – Wa SHS, Wa Islamic SHS, Jamiat Girls SHS, T.I Ahamdya SHS, Wa Secondary Technical SHS, and Wa Technical Institute – participated in the training organized by the CARD-Ghana as part of the implementation of the She Leads project in the Upper West Region.
The participants were taken through effective leadership skills, ethical use of Social Media, and rediscovery of their personalities.
Speaking at the training, Miss Ernestina Biney, the Project Coordinator at CARD-Ghana, noted that the workshop was to build on the leadership skills the girls had acquired to aid them in their leadership endeavors.
She said it was also to encourage others to venture into leadership positions if they had the opportunity to do so.
“After this training, we expect the girls to function effectively in leading their colleagues to mark after their tenure.
“They should also train their colleagues in the club, at the school and even at home and to encourage them to also aspire to lead”, she explained.
She explained that the She Leads project had inspired some female students in some second-cycle institutions in the Wa Municipality to brace the odds and take up leadership roles.
Miss Biney said that was after the student had participated in a series of capacity-building activities on female leadership organised under the project.
Some of those students were Immaculate Atule, the Information Technology (IT) Prefect at the Wa Senior High School (SHS), and Hanifata Abdul Hamid, the Senior Girls’ Prefect at Wa Islamic SHS.
Hanifata Abdul Hamid said through the training she received she realised she could hold any position that her male counterparts held and that motivated her to contest for that position.
She added that she was able to manage the students she led using the leadership skills she had learned through the She Leads project.
Immaculate Atule also said she previously feared leading and refused a leadership position at the Junior High School level and added that the training she had received from CARD-Ghana had served as an eye opener for her.
“They thought me that any position that my colleague boys can hold I can equally hold that position, so when they opened the nominations, I applied, did my campaign, and won and I think I am doing well in the position”, she added.
Mr Christian Kwesi Majeed, a former National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) President at the SDD UBIDS, took the students through the dynamism in student leadership and politics and encouraged them to be poised for action wherever they found themselves.
He said they should pick exceptional female leaders as their role models, learn from their experiences, and aspire to be like them.
Photo caption: Participants at the workshop
