eyata started as Tongu Youth Agenda for Development in 2014. Our focus was on catalysing youth, especially women to achieve self-actualisation through education, entrepreneurship and microfinance. Programmes we offered included scholarships, counseling and mentoring, and livelihood and entrepreneurship trainings. At the time, we were serving two streams of beneficiaries – those that have chosen mainstream education as a path to self-actualisation and those were consider school drop outs or non-literates who have chosen skill vocational skills training as a path to self-actualisation. The latter group happened to be in the majority. Hence we went through a restrategising and rebranding process in 2018 to redefine our beneficiary group and to focus our solutions to meet the exigency of this group. During this process, the word “eyata” came up as the new name for our organisation from the Ewe sentence “eyata mi woe”, which means “Therefore Let’s Do It”. It was used by our beneficiaries and community members to summarise our resolve and their commitment to support us to improve socio-economic situation of women in our operational area. The sentence highlights partnerships, integrity and resolve on both sides. We chose “eyata” from this sentence for simplicity and easy pronunciation. We write our organisational name in small letters to signify that we are non-hierarchical; we all have the same responsibilities towards making impact in our community. Learn More

Currently, we work in South Tongu district, a district in the south part Volta region of Ghana. As at 2010, South Tongu district had a population of 87,950 consisting of 45 percent males and 55 percent females. 87 percent of the population lives in rural localities. The average household size for the District is 4 persons per household. The proportion of male household heads is higher compared with female household heads. Agriculture employs close to 46 percent of the economically active population followed by those in wholesale and retail, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles representing 14 percent. Men constitute the highest proportion in each employment category except self-employed without employees, the contributing family workers and domestic employees. The private informal sector employs 90 percent of the economically active population with 94 percent female participation compared to 85 percent for males. The district has three senior high schools and 2 secondary technical schools. Literacy rate is 69 percent higher than the regional average of 49 percent. Majority of the non-literate population is females accounting for 76 percent while males form 24 percent.