What Happens When You Stop Telling Girls What to Dream and Start Asking Them What They See?

Article written by Inès Gafsi Chapter Chair and CEO of Inspiring Girls Hong Kong.

There is a question I find myself returning to again and again. Not in boardrooms or strategy sessions, but in the school halls of Hong Kong, watching 14-year-old girls lean over laptops, arguing passionately about which community problem they want to solve first.

What could girls achieve if we just got out of the way and gave them the tools, the trust, and the right people in their corner?

That question is what brought Inspiring Girls Hong Kong to life. And it is the question that sits at the heart of everything we are building with SolveHers.

From Role Models to Real Change

Inspiring Girls International was founded on a powerful premise: that one of the most effective ways to raise girls' aspirations is to connect them with women who have already built the careers they once thought were out of reach. The evidence backs this up. When girls see themselves reflected in the women around them: engineers, founders, scientists, policymakers... something shifts.

Inspiring Girls Hong Kong brings that mission into one of the city's most underserved communities. Kwun Tong is home to a rich, diverse population and to girls who are brimming with intelligence, creativity, and determination, but who too often grow up without access to the networks, mentors, or experiences that help those qualities translate into opportunity.

We are here to change that.

Introducing SolveHers

SolveHers is Hong Kong's first girl-led digital venture builder for disadvantaged secondary school girls. It is not a workshop series. It is not a one-day event. It is a structured, intensive experience that treats girls not as participants, but as problem-solvers, innovators, and future leaders right now.

The programme runs in three phases. We begin with Reach & Recruit: a series of high-energy hackathons that brings together 1,000 girls across Kwun Tong schools, introducing them to AI, technology-for-good, and what it looks and feels like to tackle a real-world challenge with a team. From there, we select 100 girls — 60 from low-income backgrounds, 40 from ethnic minority communities — for the intensive Build & Grow pilot.

These 100 girls spend six months working on genuine challenges posed by NGOs and corporates. They are matched with female role-model mentors. They manage a real HKD 5,000 micro-grant — building financial literacy through lived experience rather than textbooks. And they build prototypes: real solutions, not hypothetical ones.

The journey culminates in Demo Day, where teams pitch their work to an audience of partners, corporates, and community leaders. Our target is 15–20 working prototypes, with 3–5 scaled directly by our NGO and corporate partners.

Why Co-Creation Matters

There is a particular kind of energy in a room when girls are asked: "What do you think the problem really is?"

Too often, social programmes are designed for young people, not with them. The result is that the solutions we build, however well-intentioned, miss the texture of the lives they are meant to serve. Girls in Kwun Tong understand their community in ways that no external consultant, however experienced, ever fully can. They know what their neighbours need. They feel the gaps that data doesn't always capture.

SolveHers is built on the belief that this knowledge is not a side note, it is the whole point. When we co-create with girls, we do not just get better solutions. We build something more durable: a generation of young women who have experienced, firsthand, that their voice has weight. That their ideas matter. That they are not waiting to be invited to the table, they are already building the table.

Research consistently shows that adolescent girls who engage in problem-solving, mentorship, and leadership experiences during their formative years demonstrate significantly greater resilience and self-efficacy in adulthood. We are measuring this directly: SolveHers tracks grit and resilience through the Duckworth Scale and CD-RISC-10 at baseline, midpoint, and programme end. Our target is a +20 percentage-point improvement across both measures.

What We Hope to Build

Somewhere in Kwun Tong, a young woman looks at a problem in her community, looks at her team, and thinks: 'We can do something about this'. That moment is what we're building and we want to see it replicated across hundreds of girls.

From Year 2, SolveHers is designed to be self-sustaining: funded through corporate licensing, school subscriptions, and NGO partnerships. Because lasting change in a community cannot depend on a single grant cycle. It has to be built to last.

EmpowerHer future participant pitching her idea.

A Message for the Girls of Hong Kong

The world does not need you to wait until you are ready. It needs what you already know.

Your perspective shaped by your neighbourhood, your family, your culture, your experiences is not a limitation. It is your greatest asset. The most innovative solutions in the world come from people who understand a problem from the inside. That is you.

Do not shrink that. Build with it.

Join Us

SolveHers is actively seeking NGO and corporate challenge partners, corporate mentors, and sponsors to help bring this programme to life for the girls of Hong Kong.

If you believe in what we are building, or know someone who might, we would love to hear from you. Reach out directly to hongkong@inspiring-girls.com

Because when girls solve problems, everyone benefits.