Join the UNICEF Ghana Girls' Group: Empower Young Leaders

Application Deadline: July 28, 2025
Location: Ghana Duration: 10 Months

Overview

UNICEF Ghana is looking for a passionate adolescent girl aged 10–19 to represent Ghana in the first-ever West and Central Africa Region (WCAR) Regional Girls’ Group. This initiative empowers girls to advocate for their rights and influence girl-led programs and policies. The Girls’ Group includes representatives from 24 WCAR countries and will serve as an advisory body to UNICEF over a 10-month period, helping shape regional priorities and the agenda for an upcoming summit.

Key Responsibilities

As a representative from UNICEF Ghana, you will be involved in:

Defining the Regional Agenda: Contribute to identifying key priorities for the regional girls’ agenda.
Co-creation: Be involved in content creation, consultation design, and co-authoring the final document.
Co-facilitating Consultations: (Optional, with support) Co-facilitate sessions in Ghana with UNICEF staff to gather input from other adolescent girls and stakeholders.
Artistic Submissions: Help distribute the call for artistic proposals and participate in selecting artistic pieces for an exhibition.
Regional Summit: Potentially travel to Dakar, Senegal, to participate in a regional summit around International Day of the Girl on October 11.
Advocacy and Networking: Strengthen your advocacy skills, contribute to network-building among girl-leaders, and amplify key messages and campaigns.
Regular Meetings: Attend monthly virtual meetings via Zoom. UNICEF Country Offices will facilitate access to space and internet connection for these meetings. Meetings will be convened in English and/or French, with simultaneous translation in Spanish and Portuguese. Reasonable accommodation will be made for girls with disabilities.

Benefits of Participation

Co-authorship Opportunities: Opportunities to co-author blogs, briefs, and papers, contributing to the regional girls’ agenda.
Skill Development: Strengthen advocacy skills, including negotiation and consensus-building.
Networking: Build connections with other girl-leaders across the region and with UNICEF staff.
Recognition: Participants are encouraged to use their title on their CV, social media, or elsewhere.
Support Allowance: As a successful candidate, you will receive a total of $1,000 USD (equivalent to $100 USD per month) to support expenses related to your participation throughout the duration of the programme.

Eligibility

Nationality: Ghanaian
Age: Between 10 and 19 years old as of March 1, 2025.  
Language: Fluent in English, but knowledge of French, Portuguese, or Spanish is/are added advantage.  
Community Connection: Connected to local networks, communities, organisations and/or movements to bring diverse perspectives and share learnings.
Advocacy Experience: Actively advocates for girls’ rights across key areas including leadership and empowerment, education, climate action, gender-based violence, child marriage, menstrual hygiene, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual and reproductive health (SRH), mental health, and peer learning.
Digital Literacy: Basic competencies in digital literacy, including the capacity to use collaborative applications (Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp, and e-mail) with support as needed from Country Offices.
Internet Access: Reliable access to the internet (through a local hub or UNICEF office) for virtual participation and email communication. 
Prior Engagement (Advantage): Prior engagement with UNICEF and familiarity with its work is an advantage. 
Diversity: The Group aims to be as diverse as the girls in WCAR.

Motivational Video Instructions

Video format
- Duration: 1 minute 30 seconds (90secs) maximum.  
- File size: High-quality video of 100MB max
- Video orientation: Landscape or portrait 
- File type: mp4 only 
- Filename: Rename the file name to: yourfirstname_yourlastname
- Upload video in your online storage drive and share the link

Content Prompts:
- Briefly introduce yourself.  
- Tell us why you are interested in joining the UNICEF West and Central Africa Girls’ Group. 
- Briefly describe an issue related to girls’ rights that you are passionate about (e.g., leadership, education, climate, Gender Equity, GBV, child marriage, menstrual hygiene, FGM, SRH, mental health, etc.) and tell us why it matters to you. 
- Briefly share an example of how you have advocated for girls’ rights or contributed to your community or local networks. This doesn’t have to be formal; even school club activities or community discussions count.