GEM-GHANA partnered with Learner Girls Foundation (LGF), an NGO in Paga, Ghana to train sixty (60) girls in Basic Robotics on 16th July, 2021 at Navrongo Senior High School (NAVASCO), in Navrongo-Ghana. The goal of the training is to inspire, educate and empower these adolescent girls to take interest in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) education and to take up future careers in those fields to help close the gender gap in those areas.
The girls were drawn from three (3) schools within Navrongo to meet at NAVASCO for the one day training. The Founder of LGF, Miss Kumuriwor Alira Bushiratu praised the girls for turning up for the training and expressed hope that the event will benefit them greatly. She encouraged the girls to take their studies seriously to make their families proud of them in future. On his part, the Executive Director of GEM-GHANA, Mr. Abdul Rafiiu Alhassan thanked LGF for agreeing to a partnership to touch the lives of underprivileged girls, who have great potentials to rise to become whatever they want to be. He also encouraged the girls to listen carefully to their teachers in the classroom in order to understand the concepts being taught them.
An invited Guest, Dr. Pedavoah Mary Magdalene, who is one of the few women Lecturers in the Biochemistry Department of the CK. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences, shared her experience as a woman pursuing higher education in STEAM. She added that with all the challenges, if she has made it, then they the girls too can make it and better since she also came from an underprivilege family and deprived area. She also encouraged the girls to take their studies seriously so that they can make good grades into universities to study STEAM programs.
An old girl of the NAVASCO, Dr. Patience Afulani, who is based in the US, paid the school a visit and heard of the program so she decided to come and share some words of encouragements with the girls. She took them through her experience study STEAM programs dominated by men but at the end, she has made so said the girls can also make it, if they are serious with their studies.
The training went on well and ended well with participants happy and excited. The representative of NAVASCO at the program, thanked both organizations for teaming up to organise such an informative and educative training for the girls. He also expressed a desire that the training could be a regular program on our calendar.