CAMFED Ghana has on Thursday, November 26, held its national Annual General Meeting (AGM) of partners and champions. The event took place at the Modern City Hotel in Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region, where the organization has its second office.
The national AGM which was held under the theme “Enabling young women’s agency through entrepreneurship and community service” provided a platform for CAMFED Ghana, its partners and champions, to dispassionately discuss critical issues around the chosen theme. The event also provided an opportunity for CAMFED Ghana to report on the major team and programmatic activities that took place in the year under review and to receive input from partners and champions that will inform strategies and approaches for the coming year.
As an engaging organisation, the AGM was also a time for CAMFED’s partners and champions to take stock and report on key activities, share experiences and successes, identify gaps in implementation, and above all contribute to the formulation of the overall work plan of CAMFED Ghana for the ensuing year.
In her welcome address at the event, Mrs. Sally Ofori Yeboah, National Director of CAMFED Ghana, stated that this year has been an extraordinary and challenging year with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, a major health challenge that swept across the globe. The impact of the pandemic has been significant and felt by organizations around the world, adding that the resulting nationwide school closures had a telling effect on CAMFED’s operations and delayed the implementation of key programmes and activities in schools.
Mrs. Ofori Yeboah added that in spite of the challenges, CAMFED Ghana has remained resilient and true to its clients – the young women the organisation works for. “We have for instance improvised and adopted innovative ways to deliver on our programs, including the delivery of the ‘My Better World’ curriculum on radio and social media platforms, to school children while they are at home”. She stated that CAMFED Ghana has in the course of the year hosted an entrepreneurship dialogue as well as the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program Annual Research and Learning Summit.
In her address during the AGM, Mrs. Matilda Bannerman-Mensah, Board Chairperson of CAMFED Ghana stated that CAMFED is finalizing its next five-year strategic plan. The goal of the strategic plan is to support five million girls to attend and thrive in school, by leveraging the ‘Multiplier Effect’ – whereby women who have been supported by CAMFED through school provide social and economic support to the next generation of girls. To achieve this goal, CAMFED will implement a three-pronged approach.
First of all, CAMFED will anchor the strategy in the Multiplier Effect by building the pipeline of girls who complete secondary school, join the CAMFED Association and together step forward as activists and leaders for girls’ education. The second approach, she stated, will see CAMFED focusing on scaling the Learner Guide program by partnering with ministries to roll out its flagship mentoring program through which young women lead on providing social support to girls in school. Last but certainly not the least, CAMFED will seek to invest in Enterprise Development through the expansion of young women’s livelihood opportunities and in turn, their capacity to provide economic support to girls.
There was an overview of CAMFED Ghana programs for 2020, update on district and CAMFED Association AGMs, CAMFED’s strategies to enable young women’s agency as well as an exhibition by CAMFED Association entrepreneurs during the AGM.
