Young Ghanaian wins UN award

A Young Ghanaian female advocate and former student of the Ghana Institute of Journalism, Vida Ofei-Addo together with her African teammates have won a prestigious United Nations (UN) Award.

The Ghanaian and her team won the award for their impressive presentation at the just ended Pre-United Nations Youth Assembly Seminar on Social Venture for Sustainable Development held at the Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey.

The team comprised a Ghanaian, Malian, Sierra Leonean and two Nigerians. Their presentation was on female genital mutilation (FGM) with the focus the point being Sierra Leone”.

At the end of the presentation, the group was adjudged the winners out of the many other groups that participated in the challenge.

The annual Youth Assembly presents both an enormous opportunity and challenge to stimulate and ensure youth engagement and participation in achieving an inclusive and sustainable future where no one is left behind.

Guided by the overarching principle of the 2030 UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development dubbed “Leaving no one behind”, this year’s conference explored cross-cutting issues and solutions for sustainable development in social, economic and environmental dimensions.

Out of about 1,500 delegates that attended the general Youth Assembly at the UN, about 120 of them including the Ghanaian were at the Fairleigh Dickinson University for some days prior to the general Assembly to participate in the Social Venture Challenge for Sustainable Development (SVSD).

The SVSD seminar is an intensive university certificate-based mini-course developed and delivered by Fairleigh Dickson University (FDU) with the support of Friendship Ambassadors Foundation.

The seminar was designed to introduce participants to the concepts, principles, and practices of social innovation in for-profit and not-for-profit sectors and was aimed at helping the participants form social venture proposal.

Miss Vida Ofei-Addo also received other Certificate of Completion for participating in the Microsoft Youth Spark live coding and a seminar at the World Bank Group Headquarters in Washington, DC.

Speaking to DAILY GUIDE from her base in the United States of America, Miss. Ofei-Addo who is also a Certified Nursing Assistant explained that participants in the Challenge were grouped and that she was in a group of five.

“Winning that presentation creates a platform for group members to submit their individual project proposals to another challenge called ‘The Resolution Social Venture’  where winners receive project seed funding, lifetime mentorship or social networking”, she mentioned.

“Aside the group mission, I intend to also launch a project in Ghana on sustainable development goal number 3 and 5; which will focus on good health and wellbeing, gender equality and youth empowerment,” she revealed.

According to her, several attempts were being made by many institutions to project women to their rightful status in the world.

She hinted that she would embark also on a global tour dubbed “I CAN”, aimed at empowering women and the youth to take up challenging roles in their communities.