Group seeks to empower 100 girls through education in 2019

A group, Onitsha Professional Ladies Circle (OPLC), is planning to empower about 100 girls through education and skills acquisition programmes before the end of 2019.

Speaking at a fitness exercise tagged, “Walkathon,” President of the group, Mrs. Obi Ibekwe, said the maiden edition of the empowerment programme, which commenced with seven girls, will increase the number to 30 by the end of this month, and then to 100 girls by the end of 2019.

She said their overall aim is to assist parents and tackle the challenges that hinder them from training their girl child through secondary and tertiary institutions.

She said, “We stand for women empowerment, and we believe that women should have more voices in the society.

To achieve this exposing a girl child to quality education is imperative.

When you educate a girl child, she can stand up and she can take informed decision.

So we hope to empower them financially, economically, intellectually and politically.

“Educating the girl child is the foundation of women empowerment, and then skills acquisition. We intend to groom them primary through secondary education.

We discovered that most parents have difficulties in sponsoring their wards’ secondary education, the reason we have high school-drop-outs.

She continued, “This is where we intervene and take up the payment of paying the school fees.

We offer scholarships to children in this category, but our beneficiaries must not only be academically good, they must also be indigent.

We look out for those girls that are disadvantaged, so that we can support them.”