Crown Princess of Sweden visits Tech Needs Girls in the Slum

On Monday the 17th of March 2014, her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, together with Swedish Minister for Trade, Ewa Björling, arrived at the Achievers Book Club centre at Maamobi (a suburb of Accra in Ghana) to visit and witness the girls and the Tech Needs Girls team in action.

This was a historic event. It was the Crown Princess's first visit to Ghana and her first stop was with Tech Needs Girls. She came with a 15 member delegation. This visit was made possible by Reach For Change. As part of her official visit she had the opportunity to see a change leader in action. She visited the girls during a Tech Needs Girls Workshop  with the Achievers Book Club where the girls were being taught to build websites and write HTML.

For the girls from the slum  and the whole community it was like a dream come true. They had never has such an important personality visit the community and interact with them. The princess got the opportunity to talk to the girls and mentors from the Tech Needs Girls. She got to see the girls learning to code and the mentors teaching them.

The workshop started with the founder of Tech Needs Girls playing a Math Game with the girls. Next the girls went into groups with the mentors for the coding sessions.

The princess thanked Tech Needs Girls and the Achievers Book Club girls for welcoming her into the community and commended Tech Needs Girls for the work they were doing. Tech Needs Girls gave the Princess and the Minister of Trade a gift bag to thank them for the visit and Tech Needs Girls souvenirs so that they could remember the special day.

For the girls they were excited to have royalty visit them. Most of these girls don't have access to role models and will be married before they are 18 years. With programs like Tech Needs Girls they are not just learning technology skills but get the opportunity to go to university and aspire for greater things. To have access to a princess all the way from Sweden in the slum made the girls feel important and made them feel that really nothing is impossible.

We want to thank Reach For Change for giving us the opportunity to have the crown princess visit and inspire the girl to aspire for more and believe in their self worth. Tech Needs Girls was excited to share our workshop with the princess and her delegation.

Below are some images from the historic visit.

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