Problem Statement:
Teenage mothers in the Shai Osu-doku Hills community need to have the right incentives to develop an interest in education, create sustainable jobs, and understand the dynamics of Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) in order to be reskilled for the future while having the ability to provide their basic needs.

Target Group: 

Teenage mothers in the Shai Osu-Doku hills community are the primary target group. The secondary group would be female students in high schools.

Proposed Solution: 

The Global Shapers Dodowa “Future Icons Educational Hub” is an incentive-based initiative to improve interest in education, provide an extensive platform for peer-to-peer collaborative learning, educational support, mentorship, immersive learning experiences for students and teenage mothers within the Shai Osu- Doku Hills community. This project would be rolled out in 2 cohorts for 12 months. 4 months for each cohort of 50 beneficiaries and 3 months for Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) activities. The project would employ expertise from the hub and a partner vocational and technical education institute to run the trainings for beneficiaries in the community.

Hub Activities: 

·       Stakeholder Engagement: The hub would work with community stakeholders like the traditional and political leaders to mobilize the right beneficiaries for this project. This is an important part of rolling out a program of that nature in a community that respects tradition and politics. Some of the stakeholders include, Queenmothers, Chiefs, Member of Parliament, Regional Education Directorate, community women groups and youth leaders.

·       Cohort Training: There shall be two cohorts of 50 participants each in the project. Each cohort will span over 4 months. A month after each cohort training would be used do Monitoring, evaluation and learning activities. Training would happen 3 times in a week to allow for beneficiaries to be more flexible in practicing what they learn. Training would include sessions on catering, Digital literacy, Bag and bead making, Leadership, SRHR and financial management. Graduates from the first cohort would be given the chance to share their learning experience with the second cohort. There would be opportunities for peer-to-peer learnings for both cohorts. 

·       Industry Tour: As part of the training within each cohort, an industry tour would be organized for participants to travel int of the Shai Osu-doku hills community to the city center to engage with Design Technology Institute, a vocational, technical and Technology institute that specializes on training students to produce sustainable solution for all kinds of industries. This tour would be a chance for beneficiaries to see and experience in real-time what industry looks like. 

·       Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning: Monitoring would be conducted throughout every cohort to ensure that partners are delivering on the agreed objectives. Evaluation would be conducted after the 4^th month of every cohort to assess the impact levels of the training and identify new learnings that could improve the next cohort. The hub is fortunate to have members with expertise in MEL activities and they would volunteer to do this. The outcome of the MEL activities would feed into the overall report that would be submitted to the Innovation Prize Team.

Short & Long-Term Goals/Results: 

By this training/engagement, we would;

·       Empower teenage mothers with job skills that will bring them income and dignity.

·       Create an incentive for teenage mothers who have dropped out of school to go back to school through our partner Technical and Vocational Institute.

·       Decrease the risk of teenage mothers being marginalized in the job and education space.

·       Increase awareness about SRHR

·       Reskilling young people for future leadership

·       Increase in digital literacy in the Shai Osu doku community.

 

Collaborators: 

The Hub shall be working with the following institutions for the execution of the project:

·       Design Technology Institute

·       Jenny’s Catering School

·       Ghana Education Service

·       Ghana Health Service

·       Marie Stopes Ghana

 

 

Key resources:

Training space

Computers for digital literacy (would also benefit digital literacy in host school)

Training materials

Training personnel

Registration/Membership IDs

Tshirts

Exercise books and pens

Rented vehicle for industry tour