A girl empowerment programme, SKY Girls has stressed its resolve to impact more girls across the country through partnerships.

The movement has a thoughtful purpose – empowering girls and building a resilient generation of young women built around their passion points.

Some of the tools used to reach out, engage and impact girls include the SKY magazine, community engagement with speed mentoring sessions, movies, radio shows and an active online presence.

In collaboration with the Ghana Education Service, SKY Girls Ghana organized a Stakeholder Engagement Forum on Wednesday 27^th September, themed: Effective Behavioural Change Campaigns in Schools - 'The SKY Girls Ghana Case Study'.​

This event took place at the British Council, Accra and saw engagement with donor organisations, NGOs, role models in STEM, girls from the SKY Girls community and students from some senior high schools in Accra.

The event showcased SKY Girls Ghana’s successes in engaging with teenage girls in schools, communities and online using a proven behavioural change model.

Stakeholders engaged in discussions towards enriching such programmes in Ghana by establishing relationships and partnerships with like-minded organizations to execrate efforts to impact youth especially teen girls in Ghana.​ 

Speaking to the media, Yaa K. Boateng, the Project Manager for SKY Girls Ghana, said that SKY Girls has reached over 300,000 girls and they aim to reach more girls as they incorporate more issue areas that matter to the girls.

“SKY Ghana was originally focused as an anti-tobacco intervention with the objective of stripping out the aspiration and coolness of smoking and engaging with shisha. It has expanded to incorporate STEM, Adolescent Reproductive Health, Financial Inclusion, Career Choices and Entrepreneurship. SKY Ghana reaches the community of SKY Girls by producing and distributing 50,000 SKY magazines every quarter, vlogs; radio shows, in-school clubs, movies and social media. The content is co-created with the girls so they see themselves in SKY and this is what makes the initiative unique."

Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann, Dean of the School of Engineering Science and current host of the National Science and Maths Quiz, Dr. Henrietta Fiscian and Nana Afua Serwaa Adusei popularly known as SHECANIC were amongst the ‘Women In STEM’ who were recognized for their immense contribution to the SKY Girls magazines towards the fueling aspiration of pursuing careers in STEM amongst teen girls in Ghana.

A representative from Ghana Education Service (GES), Stephanie K. Mireku Asante also spoke about SKY Girls support in the educational system.

“My role as a safeguarding consultant for SKY Ghana provided support to the SKY Ghana team in capacity building and ensured that concerns from the girls were handled appropriately in line with safeguarding policy best practice. Through the GES partnership with SKY Girls Ghana, we were able to strengthen a sense of community among teenage girls in schools.

"After six years of collaborating with SKY Girls Ghana, we have seen the positive impact of their work beyond Smoking to in tackling issues penitent to GES ‘’

When engaged, girls have reported that being part of SKY Girls has inspired them to be more confident, identify the things they like, be more accepting of themselves and others. It has also helped them build positive refusal skills with an insightful message to the girls: Be True To Yourself.

Venus Tawiah, Director of Business and Corporate Communications at Now Available Africa added “Creativity well executed has the ability to spark a strong wave of meaningful outcomes in society and this is exactly what Now Available Africa stands for. We have been implementing SKY Girls in Ghana for the past 6 years. We hope to continue to accelerate our impact on teenage girls in Ghana by forging partnerships, which is what our stakeholder forum has been about.’’

About SKY Girls GH:

SKY is a multimedia empowerment programme by girls, for girls. It is a hugely successful, impactful and well-supported initiative that is in six African countries; Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria.