Adama Finda Borway

Raised by a mother who survived child marriage and domestic violence, Adama Finda Borway has emerged as a courageous advocate for girls’ rights and education in a country where many still face systemic barriers. After her mother’s passing during her final year of secondary school, Adama put her university ambitions on hold to support herself through market vending, tutoring, and small-scale craft sales.

Despite these hardships, she turned her grief into action. In 2018, while still out of school, she founded the She-Empowerment League (SEL) – a grassroots initiative in Sierra Leone’s Kono District focused on empowering girls and young women through leadership development, vocational training, and trauma healing. Through SEL, she has led programmes that have trained over 500 girls across 14 communities in three districts, providing skills in tailoring, tie-dye, digital literacy, resin art, entrepreneurship, and confidence-building.

The Sister Circle sessions which the SEL offers creates safe, skill-building environments for young women, and the Our Skills for Freedom and Violence Prevention programmes also include violence prevention education and rights awareness. These efforts have not only impacted hundreds of participants but have led to eight young women launching their own businesses using the skills they acquired. SEL also offers ongoing mentorship and support to ensure long-term success.

Recognising that menstrual health is a key barrier to school attendance, she also launched the Sister Bags initiative, distributing 600 menstrual hygiene kits to girls across six schools in the Western Area Urban and Rural districts, and delivering hygiene education to promote dignity and educational continuity.

Her work quickly expanded beyond local impact. In 2023, she was selected for the prestigious Community Engagement Exchange Program in the United States, where she spent three months with YWCA Utah learning how to scale grassroots organisations. During this time, she piloted a peer mentorship network – an initiative that has since helped two girls return to school and is now being replicated in Sierra Leone.

A gifted student and innovator, Adama has excelled academically despite her challenges. She won multiple awards during secondary school – including Best Science Student, Best Debater, and Best English Speaker – and co-founded her school’s JET Innovation Club, which designed a solar-powered irrigation system for farmers, winning district innovation accolades. She is now studying Medical Laboratory Science and Diagnostics, balancing academics with active leadership in her organisation.

Her national advocacy began early. In 2018, she became the first female President of the Children’s Forum Network (CFN) in Kono, mobilizing 60 youth to successfully lobby three chiefdom councils to adopt by-laws banning child marriage, directly benefiting over 1,200 girls. She now serves as Chair of the She Leads Movement Sierra Leone and as Sierra Leone’s Global Girls and Young Women Representative for the She Leads Board, contributing to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act and the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act.

If Adama wins the Global Student Prize, she plans to allocate $50,000 to establish a Skills and Leadership Center in Kono District, designed to serve at least 500 girls each year. She also plans to expand the Sister Bags initiative, scaling the distribution of reusable menstrual kits from 700 to 2,200 girls across rural schools.