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?
The spark for Hope Builders came from seeing how many vulnerable girls face barriers that prevent them from fully participating in school and community life. Through my previous community work, including menstrual hygiene and girls’ education activities, I interacted with girls and saw that providing information or materials alone was not enough. Many girls also needed confidence, knowledge of their rights, supportive adults, and opportunities to express themselves and take leadership roles. The “Aha!” moment came when I realized that girls should not only be beneficiaries of solutions—they should be part of creating them. I began thinking about how we could create a safe and supportive platform where girls could understand their rights, build confidence, speak about the challenges they experience, and become advocates for inclusion. This led to the idea of Breaking Barriers. With Hope Builders, we saw an opportunity to bring girls, teachers, community members, and stakeholders together to create practical and sustainable change, starting from the school level.
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.
We encourage others to join Hope Builders by giving them meaningful opportunities to participate, contribute ideas, and take action. Through our community engagement activities, we connect with girls, students, teachers, youth volunteers, parents, community members, and other stakeholders. For Breaking Barriers, the girls are at the centre of the solution. They will participate in peer education, creative activities, rights awareness, leadership sessions, and the Girls Inclusion Champions Club. Teachers and community stakeholders will also be engaged through dialogue because sustainable change requires support beyond the school. We use storytelling, drama, social media, direct conversations, and community discussions to help people understand the challenges vulnerable girls face. We encourage people to become part of the solution rather than simply observe the problem. So far, our wider community work has involved girls, young people, volunteers, schools, and community stakeholders, particularly through our previous girls’ education, menstrual hygiene, peacebuilding, and youth empowerment activities. We will build on these relationships to mobilize more people around inclusion and girls’ leadership.
How many people are on your team?
6
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Breaking Barriers is at an early implementation stage, so our main impact will be measured through both the number of girls reached and the changes in their confidence, knowledge, and participation. Our target is to reach 150 vulnerable girls at Government Girls Day Secondary School, Tudun Wada, Gusau. We expect at least 120 girls to demonstrate improved confidence and self-esteem and at least 120 to show stronger knowledge of their rights, inclusion, and available support systems. We also aim to engage 30+ teachers, parents, community leaders, and other stakeholders through dialogue and reach at least 500 people through awareness activities. Beyond these numbers, our greatest impact will be seeing girls become more confident in expressing themselves, supporting their peers, understanding their rights, and taking leadership roles. The Girls Inclusion Champions Club will help ensure that this impact continues after the initial project period.
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Established (We have regular weekly or monthly impact that we are reliably measuring)
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
In many communities within Gusau Local Government of Zamfara State, vulnerable girls continue to face social barriers that limit their confidence, participation, and access to opportunities. Many girls experience low self-esteem, making them reluctant to express themselves, take on leadership roles, or actively participate in school and community activities. In addition, many are unaware of their rights, available support systems, and the importance of social inclusions.
Project title
Social Inclusion for Marginalized Groups and Persons with Disabilities.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Many vulnerable girls in our communities experience exclusion, discrimination, limited awareness of their rights, low confidence, and few opportunities to participate in decision-making or leadership. These barriers can affect their education, wellbeing, relationships, and ability to speak up about issues affecting them. This problem matters to me because I have seen through my community engagement work that girls often have ideas, talents, and aspirations but may lack the support and safe spaces needed to express them. When girls are excluded, the whole community loses their potential. In Gusau, there is a need for practical approaches that go beyond awareness by empowering girls to understand their rights, build confidence, support one another, and participate meaningfully in their communities. Breaking these barriers can help create a more inclusive environment where every girl has the opportunity to learn, lead, and contribute.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
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.
Over the next year, Team Hope Builders will strengthen Breaking Barriers by sustaining the Girls Inclusion Champions Club at Government Girls Day Secondary School, Tudun Wada, Gusau. We will support members to continue peer education, leadership development, girls’ rights awareness, and inclusion activities after the initial project. We will engage teachers, parents, community leaders, youth volunteers, and relevant organizations to build a stronger support system for vulnerable girls. We will monitor the progress of participating girls, document lessons and success stories, and use the findings to improve the project. We also plan to develop partnerships with organizations working on girls’ rights, education, gender equality, disability inclusion, child protection, and youth empowerment. Based on the lessons from the first phase, we hope to adapt and replicate the model in other schools in Gusau. Our long-term goal is to build a sustainable, girl-led platform where vulnerable girls can develop confidence, understand their rights, participate in decision-making, and become advocates for inclusion.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
What makes Breaking Barriers different is that we are not treating vulnerable girls simply as beneficiaries—we are positioning them as active changemakers and leaders. Many programmes focus mainly on providing information or materials, but our approach combines rights awareness with confidence building, leadership, creative expression, peer support, and community engagement. We use drama, storytelling, spoken word, role play, and peer discussions to create an environment where girls can safely express themselves and connect what they learn to real-life challenges. We then turn this participation into a sustainable structure through the Girls Inclusion Champions Club, where girls can continue educating and supporting their peers. Another innovative element is that we connect school-level empowerment with community-level action. Teachers, parents, community leaders, and other stakeholders are brought into the conversation so that responsibility for inclusion does not rest on the girls alone. We will also develop a School Gender Inclusion Charter and policy brief to turn lessons from the project into practical commitments and advocacy tools. This combination of girl-led action, creative learning, peer leadership, and community accountability is what makes our approach distinctive.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Hope Builders is implementing Breaking Barriers: Empowering Vulnerable Girls Through Inclusion, Rights Awareness and Leadership at Government Girls Day Secondary School, Tudun Wada, Gusau. Our solution combines education, leadership development, creative expression, community engagement, and sustainability. We will engage 150 vulnerable girls through interactive sessions on girls’ rights, social inclusion, child protection, confidence, self-esteem, and leadership. Rather than only giving lectures, we will use drama, storytelling, spoken word, role play, peer discussions, and other participatory activities that allow girls to express themselves and learn from one another. We will also engage teachers, parents, community leaders, youth volunteers, and other stakeholders through community dialogue to strengthen the support system around the girls. A key part of the solution is establishing a Girls Inclusion Champions Club, where selected girls will continue peer education, awareness activities, and advocacy after the project ends. We will document lessons and success stories and develop practical sustainability tools, including a School Gender Inclusion Charter and a policy brief on girls’ rights and inclusion. Our goal is to create a model that can be strengthened and replicated in other schools in Gusau, helping more vulnerable girls move from being excluded to becoming confident participants and leaders.
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
Our team has 5 members: Ahmad Ahmad (Team Leader), Nafiu Bello Rabiu (Deputy Team Leader), Umar Ahmad (Communications Officer), Musa Aliyu (Finance Officer), and Abubakar Lukman (Community Engagement Officer). We share leadership by giving each member clear responsibilities, encouraging everyone to contribute ideas, and making key decisions together. We hold regular check-ins, support one another, and remain accountable for delivering our shared goals.
