The Global Women Development Promoters (GLOWDEP), a non-profit gender-focused organization, has reiterated its commitment to promote women’s economic empowerment through Entrepreneurship Savings and Loans Groups (ESLG).
Speaking at a media engagement in Accra, Mrs Victoria Norgbey, Executive Director of GLOWDEP, said it trains women in record keeping to be able to sustain their businesses.
According to her GLOWDEP focuses on the areas of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), Girl Child Education, Women Empowerment, Gender Training, and the Village Savings and Loans Association.
She noted that the organization’s Ghana Poultry Project (GPP) was being sponsored by the United States (US) Department of Agriculture (USDA), hence, it builds the capacity of people along the poultry value chain, especially women.
Again, she stated that the GPP through USDA was introducing an innovation, where they were putting some seed money into the savings box, as such, the funds available would be used as their start-up capital.
She said this would help sustain their businesses, adding that, “the impact here is that instead of going to the bank to take loans with high interest, we decide among ourselves how interest rates should be set, sometimes three per cent, depending on the group”.
The Executive Director, who noted that the training was in progress, anticipated that by doing so, they could mobilize their own capital for business.
Regarding ‘Girl Child Education and Retention in School’, one of GLOWDEP’s focused areas, there have been mentoring and coaching of young girls towards leadership positions through the formation of 25 Girl Clubs in Central and South Tongu Districts.
Mrs Norgbey said with support from the French Embassy in Ghana, 625 Girl Child were retained in schools across the two Districts, and 625 Girls’ confidence and capacities were built through the organization of quizzes and workshops in both Central and South Tongu Districts.
With the WASH programme, 40 Water Boards have been formed and sensitized; education and capacity building for 280 Water Board members out of which 150 were women; and 50,010 people educated during the period under review out of which 30,776 people were females.
Mr Edwin Ahorney, Board Chair, GLOWDEP, who chaired the event, said GLOWDEP was operating in key areas of the economy, namely agriculture which takes a larger percentage of the population; again, the organization operates within WASH and the health sector.
GLOWDEP is a network of people who believe that gender disparity is an injustice, which contributes to poverty and ignorance thereby hindering development
