Invite the Girls & Young Women
According to The World Bank collection of development indicators, the female population in Ghana as of 2018 was about 49%. Aside this, female life expectancy at birth was reported to be 62 years while that of males was 60 years. This communicates the fact that, females have comparatively higher chances of living longer than males thus the need to support them to be independent of their male counterparts. At present, the literacy rate for the adult male population is 82% while that for the adult female is 71%. This state of affairs puts the female at a disadvantage position and therefore the need to bridge this education gap. The solution will use mobile phones as a far reaching communication tool to invite and keep the enthusiasms of girls and young women to pursuit education.
Our solution is geared towards solving the problem of low enrollment of girls and young women in formal and informal learning and training. In Northern Ghana, about 40% of girls marry by the age of 18 which essentially implies that, these girls either do not complete school or never get the opportunity to attend school. Globally, this situation is not better either as only 39% of girls get to attend secondary school as compared to their male counterparts. To overcome this problem will require tackling major hurdles including early marriage, few number of female mentors in education, and low motivation.
Invite the Girls & Young Women solution seeks to use technology to motivate girls and young women to enroll for formal or informal education or both. Our solution also seeks to promote educational continuity for girls and young women. To reach more of our target population, our solution among others will use mobile phones, radio broadcasts and documentaries to send out our messages. Culturally, the people of Northern Ghana use tales and local music to motivate and inspire themselves. This practice will also be adopted in delivering our solution. Successful women and their success stories on how they broke the glass ceiling will be shared. Among our team are such successful women who will also provide some skills training to our target population. Model communities will have demonstration sites to champion our objectives on agriculture (the use of improved farming methods), pottery, Shea butter processing, and some entrepreneurial training (soy milk, kebab and soap productions and post harvest handling of vegetables). Subsequently, our target population will be constantly motivated through tales, music and voice messages sent to mobile phones. Radio broadcasts will be used to augment this.
The Invite the Girls & Young Women solution is meant for girls and young women in rural Northern Ghana. These communities have limited access to information/education due to the absence of social amenities such as electricity, good roads and clean water. Our baseline survey shows that, motivation, use of tales and music, voice messages and radio broadcast can increase female enrollment in these communities. The success of this solution will have more Northern women having better paid jobs, owning businesses and having higher yields from their agricultural activities. These will also increase their status in society.
- Increase the number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training
In the immediate past, girls in Northern Ghana were typically prepared for marriage from birth. This practice placed little importance on the education of the girl child. Unfortunately, some societies still observe this tradition and this has contributed to the low number of girls and women receiving education (formal and informal) in Northern Ghana. The Invite Girls & Young Women solution seeks to change this situation by proposing the use of an integrated approach to encourage girls and young women from deprived communities in Northern Ghana to seek education.
- Concept: An idea being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea
- A new application of an existing technology
Our solution will use an integrated approach where a number of technologies (mobile phones, radio broadcast, documentaries, skill training) will be used to achieve specified objectives.
- Ancestral Technology & Practices
- Audiovisual Media
- Behavioral Technology
- Software and Mobile Applications
- Women & Girls
- Children & Adolescents
- Rural
- Poor
- Low-Income
- 4. Quality Education
- Ghana
Our goals are:
- Increase the percentage of girls and young women receiving education (formal and informal) to at least 55% in five years time
- In a year's time we plan to improve the business and entrepreneurial skills of at least 10% of the girls and young women in the communities we will be operating.
- Other, including part of a larger organization (please explain below)
University for Development Studies. In line with one of our university's mission statements, our team seeks to 'promote equitable and socio-economic transformation of communities through practically-oriented, community-based, problem-solving, gender- sensitive and interactive research, teaching, learning and outreach activities'
We are 5 in number
- Full-time; 3
- Part-time; 2
Our team is made up of educators and researchers who work with the University for Development Studies, Tamale. Our experiences in delivering community outreach programs puts us in a better position to achieve our solution's objectives.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
To receive resources to champion our solution's objectives.
- Funding and revenue model
- Marketing, media, and exposure
MIT faculty and Solve members
Our proposed solution is designed to address the low enrollment of girls and young women in education in Northern Ghana. With our expertise and experiences in education in Northern Ghana, and being natives of the area together with how integrated our solution is, makes us qualified for the prize. The prize would be used to execute programs that will help us achieve our stated objectives.
Our proposed solution is designed to address the low enrollment of
girls and young women in education in Northern Ghana. With our
expertise and experiences in education in Northern Ghana, and being
natives of the area together with how integrated our solution is, makes us qualified for the prize. The prize would be used to execute programs that will help us achieve our stated objectives.
Our proposed solution is designed to address the low enrollment of
girls and young women in education in Northern Ghana. With our
expertise and experiences in education in Northern Ghana, and being
natives of the area together with how integrated our solution is, makes us qualified for the prize. The prize would be used to execute programs that will help us achieve our stated objectives.