18 May The Female Empowerment Agenda at Bowney Initiative

Nazaretha Nyamuame, an AVI fellow is the deputy director of Bowney Initiative. The organization focuses on empowering adolescent girls so that they can achieve their education and career goals. 

“Many young girls in Ghana are unable to reach where they desire, in terms of education and career, due to constraints such as funds, lack of mentorship, etc.

Bowney seeks to bridge this gap by providing these girls with the necessary leadership, mentorship, scholarships and entrepreneurship skills. At Bowney, the girls are taken through various modules and sessions to prepare them for the world and to help them achieve their goals, despite obstacles that seem to be in the way. These initiatives are in the aim of tackling 3 SDGs: End Poverty in All Its Forms Everywhere (1), Ensure Quality Education and Promote Lifelong Learning Opportunities for All (4) and Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls (5).”

As a non-profit, Bowney Initiative creates impact by establishing partnerships and donor opportunities to advance opportunities for girls in the program. They do not only rely on donations but raise funding through the services they run. While mentoring and training the girls, some of them, from more affluent homes, pay a fee to advance through their modules. Bowney also engages in the selling of items to the general public to gain revenue.

Sally Yeboah, Nazaretha’s mentor, is a former staff member of Ashesi University (Senior Admissions Officer) and the current national director of CAMFED Ghana. The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) is a non-profit organisation that supports and helps facilitate the education of girls from marginalised communities. 

Nazaretha expressed that her partnership with her mentor has been a “good experience so far” and that because “Sally has been” in a similar industry to that of Bowney’s “for a while, she has a lot of experiences to share, particularly about the organization that she is working with.” Even though CAMFED bears several similarities to Bowney Initiative, Sally often “foresees how things might be different” for Bowney as compared to CAMFED. 

“She pointed me in certain directions for research for our organizations that I hadn’t thought of before. We are both passionate about  seeing girls progress in their lives and careers.”

According to Sally, Nazaretha reaches out as “often” as she can, especially when she needs a “sounding board for decisions” she is “considering.”

“We interact on Whatsapp but we’ve also had the opportunity to meet up on two other occasions. 

Grace joined the AVI mentorship programme to take up the “opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the unfolding dreams of young people.”