The Youth Placement for Employability Solutions (Y-PES) Ghana, a Civil Society Organisation, has encouraged Queen Mothers to use their offices to facilitate and influence change and development in their respective jurisdictions. It believed that queen mothers had the abilities to lobby and influence authorities and philanthropic organisations to extend development projects and interventions to their communities to impact the livelihoods of their people. Mr Sulemana Mumuni, the Executive Director of Y-PES Ghana, who said this in Wa observed that many queen mothers had established foundations to solicit support from diverse sources to impact their communities. He was addressing some Divisional Queen Mothers in the Upper West Region during an engagement with the Platform of Divisional Queen Mothers of the Upper West Region. The Y-PES Ghana facilitated the engagement, which brought together over 40 Divisional Queen Mothers in the region. It was aimed to empower, encourage and motivate the queen mothers to r espect and uphold the sanctity and power of the offices they occupied as revered and use that to influence change in their communities. 'It is our hope that as Queen Mothers, you will be able to change the narrative of women always being relegated to the background in our societies. We believe that when women are well empowered most people in our societies will benefit,' Mr Mumuni explained. The Organisation also made inputs into the drafted constitution of the Divisional Queen Mothers in the region. The Y-PES Ghana Executive Director assured the queen mothers that his organisation would build their capacities in the areas of leadership, personal branding, digital and social media usage, financial mobilisation and proposal writing to enhance their work. Mr Mumuni also introduced Y-PES Ghana to the queen mothers, its focus, objectives and how they could involve and support the organisation to impact the lives of young people in the region and beyond, especially the girl child. The Queen Mothers expressed gratitude to Y-PES Ghana for the engagement and inputs into the constitution. They pledged to work closely with Y-PES Ghana and other Non-governmental Organisations (NGOS) in their communities to help mitigate the youth unemployment challenge in the region. Pognaa Maria Yakubu, Sunche, the Divisional Queen Mother and Convener of the Platform, appealed to Y-PES Ghana to continue to build the capacities of Queen Mothers and support the brilliant but needy students, especially girls in their communities. Source: Ghana News Agency