Facilitator spotlight: Christiana Zaglago empowers Ghanaian sisters
In the Volta Region of Ghana, Christiana Zaglago is training women from Mafi to use mobile money and improve their digital skills, using our USAID-funded Hey Sister! curriculum.
As a branch manager at Jireh Microfinance, Christiana Zaglago is working to build women’s digital financial literacy in Ghana using the USAID-funded Hey Sister! curriculum.
As a branch manager at Jireh Microfinance, Christiana Zaglago is working to build women’s digital financial literacy in Ghana using the USAID-funded Hey Sister! curriculum.
Mafi is a small rural mountain town located in the Tongu district, dotted with coconut and mango trees. People living here mainly rely on cassava farming and gari processing to make a living, a local Ghanaian food produced from cassava.
Since November 2020, more than 22,600 people in Ghana have used the Hey Sister! IVR content to learn how to better use digital financial services to improve their lives. Christiana works with our local partner Jireh Microfinance to promote the series, and facilitates discussion groups where women can learn from each other, practice their new skills together, and build their confidence around using mobile money. She has trained four groups to date, totaling 108 members — almost all of them women.
“Jireh is committed to the training and development of its clients, including women, and the campaign gives us a platform to educate women and men on financial systems and structures,” she says. “Empowering women to be financially independent and pursue their dreams is Jireh’s priority and also serves as our corporate responsibility.”
Most women in the Tongu district have access to a mobile phone, but many didn’t know how to use it to perform financial transactions. If they received money on it, they relied on an agent to help them cash out.
“They say knowledge is power. These women are now empowered to perform transactions on their phones without assistance from the mobile money agent,” says Christiana. “The knowledge gained also helped them open up about some mistakes they made in the past whilst doing mobile money transactions.”
Most of the women were disclosing their PIN to vendors anytime they had to withdraw money.
“Through this training, they came to understand the importance of securing their password and how to perform the transaction themselves.”
They also know how to send money now, too. Before the training, they only received it.
Christiana hopes the training will encourage women to become more financially independent and create a habit of using phones to save money. To support sustainable and long-term change, Jireh intends to train a community champion who will be stationed in the region and available for followup training and to meet other women in smaller groups.
“I am very passionate about women empowerment,” she says. “I enjoy seeing women make decisions for themselves. I am very much interested in giving women access to opportunities and power to control their own lives and the ability to influence other people with the knowledge they acquire.”
All Hey Sister! Show Me the Mobile Money content is available for free download online. Access material here.