Event Details

Empowering Girls to be Economically Self-Reliant and Successful Leaders, July - August 2007

The Women’s Foundation invited community leaders from the private and public sectors including academics, NGOs and social service organizations, as well as girls and young women themselves to contribute to the third stage of our stakeholder engagement process. This stage focused on exploring and assessing strategic solutions for empowering girls' to be economically self-reliant and successful leaders.

Three focus groups and a number of individual interviews were held to discuss the current status of girls’ development as well as barriers and accelerators to their progress. The discussions also explored strategies for our future programming, research and grant-making work.

These focus groups and interviews were conducted as a part of our year-long engagement process focusing on three priority areas: (1) breaking the cycle of poverty, (2) preparing girls for success in the future, and (3) increasing women's role in the decision-making processes. The three key areas were determined by recommendations from the public symposium convened for the release of our report “The Status of Women in Hong Kong 2006” in March 2006.

Twenty six girls, young women and practitioners attended the meetings and interviews and provided invaluable input to our understanding of current issues as well as finding strategic solutions.