Empower Marginalized Young Women in Ghana

This October, 22 women entered our campus gates for the first time.

They come from small communities with little opportunity. They bring babies with them, looking for provision where there is little to be had. They come with few dreams, but determination to transform their circumstances.

One of the questions we get asked most often is how we find the women for our programs! There are a couple steps to our recruitment process that the women go through when applying to be part of ABAN’s programs.

The first step is approaching the community as a whole. Our programs coordinator meets with community leaders first to get a sense of the people living in each town. She asks about their population, main occupations, school system, opportunities for women, and challenges they face as a whole. Next she introduces ABAN to the leaders and describes the programs we offer. She asks if the leaders know any women in the town that would be good candidates for our programs and asks to hold an information session.

The next step in our recruitment is the information session. This session is held at a communal place in town and welcome for anyone to attend. Our programs coordinator does a presentation on ABAN’s programs, then opens it up for a question and answer session. At the end of this session, women who meet our primary criteria (single mothers, aged 18-24) can sign up with their name and phone number to receive our application. Women who do not meet the criteria can still give us a phone number to reach them at in case we have other opportunities for them.

We have an open application process for a few weeks. All the women who signed up receive a phone call that applications are ready to be picked up. The woman must go to the ABAN campus and pick up the form herself, or arrange for it to be picked up. This along with the 10 GHC fee shows the woman’s dedication to being part of the program. (Of course there are always exceptions, but we really look to this as being an indicator of commitment from the start.)

There are three parts to the application: the paper forms, an individual interview, and a group interview. The paper forms ask basic questions about the woman, her age, her children, and her past education. Thirty women who meet our criteria at this stage are invited for individual interviews. During individual interviews, the women meet with our programs coordinator and training manager and are asked questions about their personality and work ethic. This is to get a sense of who each woman is as a person and what she wants out of life. Twenty-five women from this group are invited to a group interview. This interview demonstrates how she acts in a group setting and how she works with a team.

Twenty to twenty-five women are then invited to be part of our six-month program. However, no woman is turned away with no other resources. If she is a strong candidate, she will be put on the waiting list for the next six-month cycle. If she is outside of the age range, she is referred to other programs or invited to training sessions. We keep records of all women we interact with so that we can contact them if we hear of any resources that would match their ambitions!

This first six-month class is comprised of 22 wonderful women and their children. Stay connected to grow with the women and support them along their journey to empowerment through ABAN.