Girls building the future. We're going to watch it happen.
Girls For A Change creates changemakers. The Kodjoe Family Foundation is proud to go wherever the work takes them — including Ghana.
What GFC Is
Girls For A Change (GFC) builds social change leaders out of young Black women and girls in Richmond, Virginia. Founded by Angela Patton, the organization has run its flagship Camp Diva Leadership Academy for more than 20 years, alongside a full program suite: the Girl Ambassador Program, Peer Advisor, Girl Action Teams, and Immersion Lab. Their model runs on real-world projects, mentorship, and the conviction that the next generation of changemakers is already here. They just need the infrastructure to prove it.
KFF and GFC share the same architecture: you don't develop leaders by telling them about leadership. You build the conditions for them to lead.
The Ghana Trip — July 2026
In July 2026, a group of GFC scholars and leaders are traveling to Ghana as part of Her Journey Home, a year-long leadership and cultural-immersion program. It's a diaspora return journey: connecting young Black women to the continent, to the history, and to themselves in a way that only presence can accomplish.
The Kodjoe Family Foundation is partnering with GFC to document this journey. Video dispatches. Real conversations. No performative tourism. Just young women in the place their lineage comes from, building something with that. Each scholar carries a camera and produces her own short documentary about the return.
The trip runs July 18 – 29. The content runs all the way to October 11 — International Day of the Girl.
Follow the journey →Impact by the Numbers
• 300+ girls served every year across GFC's full program suite • 20+ years running Camp Diva Leadership Academy, GFC's flagship program • 80%+ of Her Journey Home participants report increased self-esteem and reduced anxiety, per GFC's own program data
⚠ Flagged, needs internal confirmation before publishing as fact: GFC's reported cohort size for this year's Ghana trip has appeared as both 18 girls in the curriculum and 15 confirmed travelers. Confirm the final number with Ashley Ray before treating either figure as fixed.
Full Circle
This partnership lives under FULL CIRCLE — KFF's fourth pillar, built on the idea that collective impact requires collective memory and diaspora connection. Taking young Black women to Ghana isn't a field trip. It's a return. And a return is always the beginning of something new.
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Girls For A Change builds the leaders Richmond doesn't know it needs yet — mentorship, real-world projects, and now, a journey to Ghana. Your gift helps fund what makes that possible.