About Queen Esther

Queen Esther is a registered non-governmental organization with a mission of empowering youth through life skills, leadership training and mentorship to promote its vision of having a generation of empowered and independent young women and girls taking the lead. The organization empowers youth, especially the girl child, by training them on life skills and leadership skills through school outreaches, peer-to-peer counseling, mentorship, and training. Through its projects, Queen Esther gives the girl child an opportunity to hold leadership positions, and provides them with a platform to empower their peers. The organization also conducts outreach programs in schools to carry out gender education as well as HIV and AIDS prevention interventions among students.

Focus: Empowering the girl child through life skills, leadership training and opportunities, mentorship, prevention of gender-based violence, and prevention of HIV/AIDS

Overall (or final goal): To empower 30,000 girls through life skills, leadership opportunities and mentorship by year 2025.

MISSION AND VISION

Mission: Empowering youth through life skills, leadership and mentorship.
Vision: A generation of empowered and independent girls taking the lead.

PROJECTS

• LEAD Girl Project
• Kagiso Project
• Girls PLAN
• Queen Esther Beauty Pageant

LEAD GIRL PROJECT

Piloted in December 2015, the project has empowered girls from Maun and surrounding villages during a training of trainer’s workshop.
Girls use knowledge and skills gained during the training of trainer’s workshop to form LEAD Girl Clubs in their schools and conduct school outreaches. Clubs meet regularly and members are active in their communities.

Project has also reached stakeholders in an effort to demonstrate the importance of empowering the girl child and create community buy-in and a supportive community in which the girl child can grow.
Lead girls are a force to be reckoned with, they are outstanding, powerful, influential, role models and agents of change.

KAGISO PROJECT

The Kagiso Project is a Conflict resolution and peace building initiative designed to use leadership training, peace education, and conflict transformation training to combat conflict in the school system.
Its objectives are to improve youth leadership at schools and in the community through training and mentoring Peace Leaders, To improve the resolution of youth conflict in the community and in schools and To improve adult and youth partnership and communication. Youth are trained on conflict resolution and create a peer mediation program.

Trained youth leaders mediate conflicts between their peers in the consensus-building style of the traditional kgotla system.
Methodology incorporated into disciplinary structure within schools, churches and Kgotla.

GIRLS POLITICAL LEADERSHIP ADVANCEMENT NETWORK (Girls Plan)

The Girls PLAN program has been developed to address gaps in girls political leadership skills and professional development. The objectives of the program are to create leadership support structures that promote continued professional growth between mentor and girl pairs
To increase political knowledge and civic education in girls and
To support professional development and identify internship opportunities for girls.

QUEEN ESTHER INTERNATIONAL BEAUTY PAGEANT

Queen Esther International Beauty Pageant is a leadership mentorship program for young women. The programme aims to empower the girl child/young women to be outstanding and remarkable young women who are good role models to their generation and agents of change. It has build-up training on leadership skills including politics, governance, stewardship, servant and transformational leadership, life skills and being agents of change in their communities.

When we first imagined the Queen Esther Beauty Pageant, we imagined a signature event that would grow to be part of the global event. This is an event birthed out of a beauty pageant that took place in the book of Esther in the Bible, where Esther was crowned the Queen.

It aims to provide a platform for Christian ladies to contest in a beauty pageant that upholds godly values. The pageant is a celebration and the ultimate expression of true beauty, intelligence and integrity. It is a search for the most inwardly and outwardly beautiful and talented young woman who displays a Christian character and is a good role model for this generation.

Young people need role models who display the fear of God and have grown into skilled, educated, articulate and productive members of society. The selected queen would be positioned to share Christian values which uphold morality of the society. She would also be expected to act as an ambassador at national and international forums.

HUMAN RIGHTS

Member of the Ngamiland Anti-Human Trafficking Network (NAHTN), an anti-slavery group based in Maun. Conducts trainings on rights of the girl child and shifting gender norms.

VISION FOR THE FUTURE

Build a resource center for girls and young women to promote professional and career development.

Expand and scale-up Lead Girl Project and the Kagiso Project to national level as evidence based best practices.