CoFA::About Us

.:Our Mission

COFA’s mission is to provide creative and educational opportunities for adolescent girls particularly in rural areas to aspire to attain college education. COFA believes access to information and education empowers individuals, their family, and community to have life choices, to make better life decisions, thus becoming more independent and maintaining a high quality of life, as they grow older. COFA offers in strategic areas of Ghana preventive, educational, motivational and social programs- all coordinated around the developmental needs of adolescent girls and provided predominately free of charge.

COFA’s programs and services bring together the professional expertise of a variety of disciplines: social work, mental health, the law, education, the arts, health and others. Building on its vision of comprehensive educational and motivational services for adolescent girls, COFA’s unique model is operating locally in select rural locations and will be replicated nationally.
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.:Aims & Objectives


	ü	Provide opportunities for growth and attainment of excellence in the development of young girls, especially in rural areas, from adolescence to adulthood;
	ü	Provide environments promoting the total growth of young girls
	ü	Provide options for creativity and social awareness;
	ü	Help young girls develop self esteem and become self-sufficient
	ü	To engender an authentic sense of belonging to the human community
	ü	To disseminate knowledge gained about adolescent girls and the effectiveness of COFA’s comprehensive model of sensitization
	ü	To impact on national youth policy and to foster institutional and social change.

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.:Our Values

In every activity of COFA, personal growth as well as the values of self-respect, discipline, self-actualization, respect for others and collective responsibility are promoted. These values are addressed in the context of the young girl’s social, emotional, physical, spiritual and educational needs.

COFA’s philosophy is holistic and comprehensive. COFA does not discriminate in its membership, programs and services on the basis of ethnicity, religion or disability. COFA creates an environment that celebrates the commonality of the human experience while respecting cultural, ethnic and political diversity; promoting youth leadership and encouraging involvement of its members in volunteer service activities in their communities. back to top

.:How it Works

COFA’s multidisciplinary volunteer staff confer together across varied professions in order to deliver a broad range of programs and services tailored to the needs of each individual member. Services are provided at a single site at a time under one administration, eliminating extraneous paperwork and administration.

COFA provides a physically and psychologically safe environment for young girls – an atmosphere where young girls feel secure and respected about attempting new experiences and developing their abilities and potential.

Every COFA member enjoys confidentiality. COFA shall involve family and other persons significant in the life of the adolescent girl in its programs. back to top

.:Founding Mothers

Helen Lydia Bedwei received her higher education in Switzerland, France, England and Germany. She has worked in the Secretariat of the Association of African Universities and with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Ghana. This was followed by a move to Nigeria where she worked for the International Bank for West Africa until 1980.

Helen stopped work to look after her daughter Farida who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. During this period she lived in Dominica in the Caribbean, Belgrade and Ghana, while also guiding Farida through education, including her recent graduation from the University of Hertfordshire, England.

Helen is now involved in running academic bookshops and importing and distributing books. back to top

Afua B. Eyeson is a legal practitioner specialising in corporate-, land- and family law at a leading law firm in Ghana. Afua obtained her bachelor’s degree in Law and History in 1998 at the University of Ghana, Legon. She continued her education at the Ghana School of Law and was called to the Bar in 2000. In 2004, she obtained a master’s degree in law in the USA at the University of Georgia School of Law where she also provided instructional guidance and counselling for high school drop-outs.

Afua became a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for abused and neglected children, in the State of Georgia in February 2004. Having returned to Ghana, she volunteers at FIDA-Ghana Legal Services as a Legal Aid Officer where she mediates in child maintenance cases. She also trains paralegals and delivers presentations in children’s rights, marriage laws and succession laws. She is currently the Secretary to the Executive of FIDA-Ghana and represents the organisation on the Regional Multi-Sectoral Committee on Child Protection. back to top

Nana Araba Apt is a sociology professor and presently Dean of Academic Affairs at Ashesi University in Accra. Before that, she was head of the Sociology Department at the University of Ghana, Legon and director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies (CSPS), which she set up with support from UNICEF at the university. Nana, an only child, was one of only five girls in a class of 30 pupils at the Shama Roman Catholic Primary School, an experience that taught her how to compete with boys and ensure her voice was heard. She later attended St Anne’s Convent boarding school at Elmina, renowned for scholarship and character building before gaining a scholarship to Holy Child Secondary School in Cape Coast.

In 1962 she won a Canadian African Students Foundation scholarship and studied at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, graduating in 1965. She then took a Masters degree in Social Work at the University of Toronto. After seven years’ extensive nationwide field experience in Ghana’s civil service as a community development worker Nana became a lecturer at the University of Ghana in the Department of Sociology. She registered with the University for a part-time PhD degree in Sociology and received her PhD in 1989.

Professor Apt’s areas of policy interests are the family, female education and ageing. She has set up HelpAge Ghana and RESPONSE, organisations working to improve the quality of life of older people and street children, and she has also advised a number of United Nations organisations and international development agencies including Save the Children Fund, Action Aid, Oxfam, The World Bank, DfID and the African Union (AU).