Women in Business: Carolyn Seaman

Carolyn is a development professional highly experienced in program design and management with bias in girl-centred programming. She is motivated to contribute to the advancement of the protection of human rights in the society with bias in the protection of girls and women’s rights and access to equal participation in economic development.

She is passionate about empowering adolescent girls and women to access basic rights and education, and build requisite skills to enable them champion advocacy for their rights and exploring innovative approaches to promote gender equality. She founded Girls Voices Initiative and inspires girls and women to use technology and digital media to amplify their voices on critical social issues affecting them.

Seaman founded Girls Voices Initiative as a non-profit organisation working to build girls voices, provide a safe platform for them to connect, share and learn from each other and use technology and digital media to amplify their voices to wide audiences. This is how they position girls and women to make their voices count.

According to her, the aim is to build girl leaders who build and support other girls. “We are actively engaged in various advocacy groups; on the national level, we are co-chairs of the Coalition of Civil Society to End Child Marriage in Nigeria and we are members of the Technical Working Group to End Child Marriage in Nigeria.” She said.

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On the regional level, they are members of the Civil Society Organisations Reference Group to the African Union Campaign to End Child Marriage. They also serve on the Africa Action Group to End Child Marriage, and on the global level, they are members of the Girls Not Brides Global Partnership.

They have reached over 875,100 adolescent girls through their girl-centred programs and together with their phenomenal girl leaders, they have reached over 80 million people through their programs.

They educate girls about their rights and expose them to opportunities where they use their voices to engage public conversations and champion advocacy; so they can mature into confident women and lead wherever they are established

Girls Voices are certain that the future of Nigeria is too important to be left to men and boys alone. At Girls Voices, they are raising girl leaders who will demand their seats at the table. And if they are not given a seat, they will create their own table because according to Seaman, “When we look at Nigeria’s over 20 million adolescent girls, we see 20 million solution innovators. Nigeria must realise that the adolescent girl may just be the strongest solution for moving Nigeria to its rightful place in the world.” She stated.