Winnifred Selby is fighting youth unemployment, environmental degradation as well as advocating for the education of girls in Ghana through Ghana Bamboo Bikes that she co-founded at the age of 15 and the EPF Educational Empowerment Initiative.
“It’s in my DNA, being able to see a problem and find a solution for it. When I was young, we were very poor, and my mother had no food to give me or my four siblings. I had to devise ways to make money. The kids in class would be eating and I would cry. When my friend’s mother gave me money to eat, I thought I should do something with it. I kept it safe in a small box, and kept adding to it, by selling toffees.”
Ghana Bamboo Bikes is a socio-ecological green initiative that makes high quality affordable handmade bikes and employs mainly women with large families to take care of. “I would see girls walking eight kilometers to school, and thought why not empower them? When I started making the bikes, people asked if I was in the right frame of mind.” The company currently employs 35 people and has trained over 41 youths how to manufacture and assemble the bikes in order to sustain themselves and reduce unemployment.
Selby was inspired to start EPF Educational Empowerment Initiative in 2010 following a visit to Northern Ghana where she witnessed girls walking barefoot for several miles, lacked sanitary towels, among other challenges. The initiative has two projects, the Menstrual Pads for Dignity Project, a partnership with Proctor & Gambles Always that enables her provide free sanitary pads to needy girls in the rural areas. While the Happy Feed Initiative provides new shoes and other scholastic materials to children from deprived backgrounds.
Selby has also partnered with a number of private universities in Ghana to provide scholarships for bright but needy high school girls who cannot afford university education through her Ghana Girls College Scholarship Program.
Selby’s efforts in making the world a better place has earned her a number of notable recognitions including; hosting a TED talk with TEDx Accra, winning the UN/Habitat Dubai International Award, 2016 New African Woman in Science, Technology and Innovation Award, Cartier Women’s Initiative award, among others.
“I realize I am impacting my generation. We women can do more no matter what our age.”
Source:
Forbes
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