We are bringing together teenage girls from Tamale, Ghana and from around the world for five sessions over five weeks of honest conversation. This is not a course but a sisterhood circle – built on the belief that young women have something real to say to each other across every boundary that divides them.

This program builds upon the SOMA in-person program run by the Hope Education Project in Tamale with young women transitioning from Junior to Senior High School. The program was facilitated by our Programs Director, Mariama Adam and is currently the subject of a research study by the University of Texas and Washington University Brown School.

Global development programmes treat girls in the Global South as recipients – of knowledge, of safety, of opportunity – and girls in wealthier countries as observers or donors. The exchange only goes one way.

SOMA Global Sisterhood Circle is built on a different premise entirely. Every girl in this circle has something the others do not. Every girl has a perspective shaped by a life that others have never lived. The point is not to educate across a divide but to close it with sisterhood.

Two Worlds – One Conversation

The circle connects two groups of young women whose daily realities look nothing alike – and who have more to say to each other because of it. This is not a lesson about life in Ghana or a window into another world. It is a genuine exchange – where a girl in Tamale changes how a girl in London, or Lahore, or Lagos thinks about her own life, and vice versa.

The sessions are facilitated by Zulfina Khudoyorova, our Youth Engagement Advisor who will manage the international participants and Mariama Adam, who will be managing the participants in Tamale.