Age
17
Country of Residence
Nigeria
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
*It happened during outreach in Calabar South. A girl — maybe 13 — pulled me aside after our session and asked, quietly, if bleeding every month meant something was wrong with her. She wasn't being dramatic. Nobody had ever told her what a period was. Her mother never explained it, her school skipped it, and the internet had only scared her more.* *That's when it clicked. We keep talking about "SRHR education" like it's a policy issue, but for her, it was just... silence. Nobody in her life felt safe enough to ask. And I realized — I didn't need a title or a clinic to fix that. I just needed to be someone she could ask.* *So I started teaching the way I wished someone had taught me — sitting with girls, not lecturing them. And something interesting happened: the girls I trained started teaching their friends too, in their own words, in places adults don't reach. That's when I knew this could grow past me — girl to girl, circle to circle, across Calabar.*
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
So far, I've engaged people the way this project will always grow: face to face. Through my fieldwork, I've already brought UNICROSS classmates on board as volunteer co-facilitators, and started conversations with school counselors and community women who now help open doors into their communities. Word travels fast when girls tell their friends a session actually helped them — that's already how interest has spread, LGA by LGA.* *Going forward, I'll keep activating people the same grounded way: school assemblies and market-day skits don't just teach, they recruit — girls who watch a Sister Circle in action often ask how to join or start their own. I'll invite UNICROSS student groups to volunteer as part of community service hours, and partner with school clubs so joining HerVoice Calabar becomes something girls choose, not something adults assign.* *The clearest sign this works is the model itself: every Peer Champion I train doesn't just learn, she goes on to recruit and teach her own circle of girls. So activation isn't a separate task I do once — it's built into everything MyVoice2Her Calabar does.
How many people are on your team?
7
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
*MyVoice2Her Calabar is early-stage, but I'm not starting from zero. Through fieldwork on an adolescent SRHR advocacy project across Calabar Municipal, Calabar South, and Odukpani, I've already helped train and mentor a cohort of young advocates and sat face-to-face with dozens of girls who had never received real health information before. That experience is exactly what shaped this idea — and proved girls will show up and open up when the space feels safe.* *Here's what impact looks like as HerVoice Calabar launches: in year one, 20 trained Peer Champions running Sister Circles across three LGAs, reaching at least 1,000 girls directly with SRHR knowledge, referral pathways, and menstrual hygiene support. Success means fewer girls forced out of school by unplanned pregnancy, more girls who can name abuse and know where to get help, and mothers who become allies instead of gatekeepers of silence.* *The bigger win is what happens after year one: because Peer Champions train the next generation, impact keeps compounding without needing me at the center. A girl trained today becomes a teacher tomorrow — and that's how one idea turns into a movement across Cross River State.*
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
*Girls in Calabar are learning about their bodies from rumors, TikTok, or the hard way — not from someone they trust. HerVoice Calabar flips that: trained teen "Peer Champions" teach the next girl about periods, consent, and her rights, in small circles where no question is too awkward. Knowledge, from a sister, before the streets teach her wrong.*
Project title
MyVoice 2Her Calabar:
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
*Girls in Calabar are growing up without basic knowledge of their own bodies — and it's costing them their futures. Comprehensive sexuality education isn't taught at home or in most schools; the topic is treated as shameful, so girls learn from rumors, unreliable sources online, or painful experience. The result: teenage pregnancies that end school enrollment overnight, girls who can't recognize abuse because no one ever named it, and silence that lets harm repeat itself.* *This isn't distant to me — I see it every week through fieldwork in Calabar Municipal, Calabar South, and Odukpani. I've met girls my own age already out of school, raising children they weren't ready for, simply because nobody reached them in time with the right information. Cross River State has hospitals and child-protection laws on paper, but none of that helps a 14-year-old who's too scared or too uninformed to use them.* *This matters to me because these are my sisters, classmates, neighbors. When a girl doesn't understand her own body or her rights, she can't protect herself — and that's not a personal failure, it's a failure of access. I want to close that gap directly, girl to girl, before another one goes through it alone.*
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://www.hakaracares.org
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
*In the next three months, I'll finalize our training curriculum with UNICROSS volunteers and HCI, then recruit and train our first cohort of 20 Peer Champions. We'll pilot Sister Circles in two communities, test the referral card and toolkit with real girls, and adjust based on what actually works before scaling.* *Over the following year, I want to expand from two communities to all three target LGAs — Calabar Municipal, Calabar South, and Odukpani — and grow to reach 1,000 girls directly. I'll formalize partnerships with schools and faith groups as steady entry points, and start the mother-daughter sessions to bring caregivers in as allies rather than obstacles.* *I also want to build a simple way to track our numbers and stories properly, so we can show real evidence of what's working, not just good intentions. And by year's end, my goal is for the first cohort of Peer Champions to be ready to train the next one themselves — proving the model can run without me at the center, and setting up HerVoice Calabar to keep growing across Cross River State long after this first year.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
*Most SRHR programs in Calabar stop at the same point: an adult expert visits a school, delivers a one-off talk, and leaves. Girls listen politely, but nothing changes, because the information came from someone they'll never see again and can't ask follow-up questions to. HerVoice Calabar is built differently — girls aren't the audience, they're the delivery system.* *Instead of one expert reaching one room, I train a small group of girls who then become permanent, trusted educators inside their own communities — a classmate, a neighbor, someone they'll still see next week if they have more questions. That ongoing trust is something a visiting speaker can never replicate.* *I'm also pairing education with something tangible, not just talk: every Sister Circle session comes with a menstrual hygiene kit and a referral card, so girls leave with both knowledge and a practical next step, not just information they might forget.* *And unlike most programs that treat parents as a barrier to work around, HerVoice Calabar actively brings mothers and guardians into short sessions of their own — turning the household silence that usually blocks these conversations into an ally instead. Finally, the model is self-multiplying by design: Peer Champions train the next cohort themselves. Most programs need constant outside funding and staff to keep running. Ours is built to outlive any single grant, because the girls become the program.*
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
*MyVoice 2HerCalabar trains teenage girls to become "Peer Champions" — educators for their own communities. Here's how it works: I recruit girls aged 14-19 from Calabar Municipal, Calabar South, and Odukpani, then train them alongside university volunteers on menstrual health, consent, contraception basics, and recognizing abuse — using simple language, not clinical jargon.* *Once trained, each Peer Champion runs small "Sister Circles" of 8-10 girls in places that already feel safe — school compounds, churches, family compounds — instead of formal classrooms where questions feel embarrassing. We also use short skits based on real (anonymized) situations, performed at school assemblies and market days, to make private topics easier to discuss openly.* *Every session pairs education with something practical: menstrual hygiene kits, so girls aren't missing school over supplies, and a simple pocket referral card showing exactly where to get help — a clinic, a counselor, a hotline. We also run short sessions with mothers and guardians, because silence at home is often the real barrier, turning caregivers into allies instead of obstacles.* *In our first year, we're aiming to train 20 Peer Champions who will reach at least 1,000 girls directly. The model is designed to multiply itself: every Peer Champion eventually trains the next one, so the network keeps growing on its own — one circle, one honest conversation, at a time.*
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
*I lead strategy and training. UNICROSS student volunteers co-teach and keep content accurate. My HCI mentor guides safeguarding. Community women and school counselors open doors I can't alone. Once trained, our 20 Peer Champions lead their own Sister Circles — leadership isn't just shared, it multiplies as each girl becomes a teacher too.*
