Girls4Girls Botswana: FEMALE EMPOWERMENT FROM THE GRASSROOTS By Lorraine Kinnear
“YOU CAN EASILY JUDGE THE CHARACTER OF A MAN BY HOW HE TREATS THOSE WHO CAN DO NOTHING FOR HIM.” —Malcolm S. Forbes
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illian Moremi is the true epitome of driving positive change towards women empowerment and youth development. With over ten years of experience in fostering the youth development agenda, her focus is youth leadership and promoting youth employment services in Africa by preparing, orientating, and matching young people for the labour market, facilitating access to sustainable jobs and business opportunities. She leads Career Coaching (Pty) Ltd, a social enterprise she established in 2013 to promote training, skills development, and productivity in the workplace. Some of the cornerstones of Career Coaching are giving career and professional development advice to students, job seekers, and professionals. Moremi's passion for working with the youth developed when she was still a young girl but it was not until completing her undergraduate degree that she advanced her humanitarian calling by establishing Botswana Student Network to work with young people across Botswana promoting education and academic excellence. Since then she has been part of many movements that have a specific focus on youth development such as Career Coaching, Kgwebo-ya-Monana in collaboration with First National Bank Botswana (FNBB), Now for Them Trust, and most recently, the Girls4Girls (G4G) Botswana programme in collaboration with the United States Embassy.
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G4G Botswana is part of a global movement that was established to capacitate leadership skills in young women across the country. The global movement was conceived at the Harvard Kennedy School in 2016 by a group of graduate students from across the globe that recognised a gap in leadership roles led by women, especially in the public sphere. Inspired by each other, they decided to close that gap and today G4G is in over 23 countries globally and boasts well over 2500 mentees supported by more than 1000 mentors. In Botswana, G4G offers a six-session mentorship program building trust, courageous leadership, the art of communication, negotiation, running public service, ethics, and values in decision making. It brings together insights from key leaders and a global network of women, mobilising a generation of mentors to grow the pipeline of women in leadership. After attending the Girls4Girls conferences in South Africa, Moremi got inspired to start and facilitate the movement in Botswana. "In 2020 I was invited by a friend, Dr. Matete Madiba who is Director of Department of Student Affairs at the University of Pretoria whom I met in 2017 during a networking session at the Organisation of African Union (OAU) during the Africa Talks Jobs Conference. In 2020, she invited me to talk to the University of Pretoria Girls4Girls Cohort on Public Service and Running for Office. THE RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN | BUSINESS • COMMUNITY • IMPACT
