"Girls Trip Tours": Empowering women through travel

Did you know that tourism could be a source of women empowerment? That’s the essence of Girls Trip Tour, an initiative launched by Eyitemi Popo, a young Nigerian based in Toronto, Canada.

The idea is to bring together women from all over the continent but also from all over the world, and together, to visit an African country and meet local actors of the country’s development.
The first Girl’s Trip Tour will take participants on an unforgettable adventure through Ghana, Eyitemi explained.

“While in Ghana, we will be exploring the country from a female prospective and that means connecting with home-grown influencers to see the city through their eyes.
We will be supporting local business women, while we’re shopping, dining out and making sure that we go to women-owned businesses,” she said.

“We’ll also be mentoring about 20 girls from the Soronko Academy which is West Africa’s first coding and human-centered design school so I think that the mentoring aspect is really what makes the Travel experience unique and that will be able to impact the community that is going to be welcoming us,” Eyitemi added.

One of Eyitemi’s main goals is to contribute to the emergence of the next generation of women leaders on the African Continent. Her motivation came from a conversation with Regina Honu, founder of the Soronko Academy.

“A lot of the parents particularly mothers were discouraging the girls from studying Computer Science because they didn’t understand what coding was and how it would add value to their children’s lives. They felt like their daughters would be unmarriable.
With my group, I hope to bring women, in the IT field who can talk to the mothers and show them that you can have a career, be a wife and kind of having it all,” Eyitemi enthused.

Through this Tour, Temi as she is fondly known, also wants to support African women who “literally carry the continent on their shoulders”. Besides bringing the spotlight on local women and telling their stories, she wants to help them move their businesses forward.

“We know that travel will continue to grow as Africa rises and I want African women to be able to profit off of that influx of tourists. By creating experiences like mine, I really empower the local people instead of just the big multinational companies and hotels,” she said.

Eyitemi wants the impact of the project to go beyond the immediate effect of the contacts and networks established during the trip. Through Girls Trip she is also starting a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to continue supporting the mentees. She aims to develop a virtuous circle of young professionals who will one day also reach out to other young women.

So if you’re interested in travelling the female way, or if you just want to support this initiative, you can read more on the website www.girlstrip.tours .

@Nigeriasinsight