Fawohodie Center is a drop-in center located at SCEF that focuses on the empowerment of women and girls in vulnerable situations. Our social workers, along with other professionals, provide sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) information, education and services.
The different projects and activities of the Fawohodie Center seek to enable each girl and woman to become the protagonist in their own story. At the same time, we intend to promote gender equality in the society.
We named our center “Fawohodie” after the Adinkra symbols, which are from the Akan, a meta-ethnicity situated in Ghana. It means freedom and symbolizes Independence, Liberty and Autonomy.
The reason for naming our Female Empowerment Center after this Adinkra symbol is that SCEF envisions a future in which girls and women
make autonomous choices about their bodies and reproductive health.
We believe that the best way to achieve this vision is to create a woman lead center where females support other females. In addition, the Fawohodie Center ensures that SCEF’s Gender-sensitive Leadership Principles are properly implemented in the day-to-day operations of SCEF.
As part of ensuring gender equality, SCEF has embarked on a project called Fawohodie which envisions a future in which girls and women make autonomous choices about their bodies and reproductive health, become economically independent, and liberate themselves from the oppressive constraints imposed upon them.
We see it as our responsibility to safeguard girls and women who are violated of their rights and denied access to SRHR services and information. For this reason, we established the Fawohodie Center which is available, accessible, without discrimination, and of good quality for every girl and woman in the community.
The project aims to educate vulnerable and sexually exploited women and girls about their sexual and reproductive health and rights so they can make autonomous choices about their bodies and become more economically and emotionally independent.
SCEF’s and Send a Smile’s social workers noticed the challenges that young girls and women encounter in their communities daily. Cases of gender-based violence are reported most frequently, which has shown us that girls and women from these milieus are particularly at risk of experiencing violence and abuse in their lives. It has occurred numerous times that female beneficiaries of SCEF and the Smile House took money or other goods in exchange for sexual favours to finance their livelihood. Furthermore, there is a lack of education about sexual and reproductive health and rights which makes them even more vulnerable to gender-based violence. One characteristic of street-connected children in urban areas is that they rarely settle in a fixed place, which makes human traffickers more aware of these children and exposes them to greater danger. For this reason, we decided to implement a project focused on sexual exploitation as one aspect of gender-based violence.
