History

The History of the Program: Africa ELTA Initiative for Empowering African Women

Africa ELTA recognized the need for making female African speakers more visible at ELT conferences by starting a mentoring program for female classroom teachers in Africa. The aim of the program is to mentor female classroom teachers from Africa to become conference speakers to qualify for speaking at Africa ELTA conferences and other ELT events. In 2020, Africa ELTA invited EVE to collaborate in co-organizing the program.

 Africa ELTA started a call for applications among our membership and selected eight women teachers from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania. Africa ELTA evaluated the program using focus groups with mentees, surveys, self-assessments, and reflections. The reaction was very positive, with the mentees finding that they had improved greatly in the technical aspects of giving presentations: controlling stage fright, using slides, pace, and pitch.

In 2021, and after the success of the first round, Africa ELTA organized the program again and added a proposal writing training that was offered by Amira Salama, the current president. Another group of eight mentees from Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Ghana, Niger, South Africa, and Nigeria participated in the program in 2022. The Africa-ELTA Newsletter, Issue 11, features articles by the 8 mentees about their experience. The final presentations from these two programs are available on Africa ELTA YouTube.

After the board decided to discontinue collaborating with EVE, Africa ELTA organized the third, fourth and fifth round of this program (in 2022, 2023, 2024) which were all entirely run by Africa ELTA male and female mentors and included mentees from across Africa. The final presentations from these rounds are available on Africa ELTA YouTube.