2

HACEY, a development organisation committed to improving the health and productivity of vulnerable and underserved populations in Africa,  is set to add to its numerous humanitarian activities by breaking barriers for girls in Lagos and Ogun through empowerment, mentorship and training, among other activities aimed to give them voice in the society.

According to Olubukola Oluwabukunmi Olumuyiwa, the Program Manager in HACEY, the programme would be anchored under Platform for Amplifying the Voice and Empowerment of Girls (PAVE) whereby there would be 17 safe spaces — 11 in Lagos State (beju Lekki, Ikorodu, Lagos Mainland LGAs), six in Obafemi Owode LGA Ogun State, while new locations, she said, include Surulere.

Olumuyiwa said more on PAVE; “Through PAVE, we are here to support in-school and out-of-school girls aged 12 to 19 to reach their full potential by equipping them with the knowledge.

“So we are teaching them, we are training them, we’re keeping them with knowledge, equipping them with skills. So there are basic art skills that we also teach them, life skills that they need to be able to grow in life, to be able to make decisions about themselves,” she said.

“We are seeing them to be confident because in all of the things that we do, we also want their self-esteem to be built, that they’ll be able to stand up and speak for themselves, to make informed decisions regarding their health, their finances and personal development.

“Their health, their finances and personal development. So about themselves, their body, their menstrual hygiene, physical hygiene, how to take care of themselves to be healthy.

“Then their finances, how to do small, small businesses to be able to get money. How to be able to manage that money that they get. And also personal development, how to grow their career, leadership, problem solving.

“All of these things are conversations that we will have with girls in this project. So what’s the objective? We have five objectives on this project.

“The first is to support girls’ mental and physical well-being through access to health information and resources on mental, sexual and productive health careers and potential.

“We are supporting the girls mentally and physically because we know that, okay, what we are seeing physically, health in general is not just the physical appearance. It has to do with mental, it has to be social, it has to do with emotional and also physical. So we are holistically dealing with their health in every ramification,” she said.

The project manager said further; “So in a class of young girls who have maybe, let’s say, 20 people, we have some people who want to learn how to make hair, some want to learn how to bake.

“So usually, we know we cannot meet everybody’s needs. So the one that is more popular, like the majority of what they say they want to learn, so we look for assistants within the community that can actually teach them this and we bring them to the space to teach them vocational skills.

“After we’ve taught them vocational skills, we also teach them how to manage their finances and financial literacy. We teach them how to manage their money, how to spend wisely and things around financial literacy and access to services.

“We train them to be leaders, to be able to see something in their community and say, ah, this is an issue in our community. Who can we go to? Who can we talk to that this situation needs to be solved in the community? So we train them to be leaders, we train them to be problem solvers, train them to be change makers, to be able to have their own agency and speak up for themselves in their community. Then also we improve educational outcomes by supporting career development and mentoring.

“We also have mentorship sessions that we have with the girls every time that they come for the session or for the class. So we mentor them and we ask them, what do you want to be in life? What is your goal and ambition for yourself? And we see how we can help them to actually actualize that goal and that goal that they have for themselves, career development. Then we provide safe platforms for self-expression, peer interaction and social network development.

We started around 2020 and we’ve been to other locations, both in Lagos and also in urban states. So this is like where we are now. We are in about 17 communities, 11 in Lagos, including Ibeju Lekki, Ikorodu, Lagos and Lagos Mainland.

“In Ikorodu we also have two communities. In Lagos Mainland, we have six communities where we are currently. Then, apart from the local governments in urban states, we are also in six communities.

Then in these two locations where we are, we have reached about 3,000 young girls with all of the things I mentioned earlier about our objectives, information, skills, knowledge, to be able to build and make a function about themselves. So now we want to come to Surulere and Agege. That’s why we are having this stakeholder engagement, because we are expanding the project.”

The project manager spoke of the evolvement of the engagement.

“So we need to engage the parents and the guardians so that they too can understand that this project is going to benefit your children, your girls, and when they understand the benefit of the project, they’ll be able to tell their daughter that by so and so time or so and so day, I don’t want to hear that you are in a place, this is not a paid program, this is not in the class that people are learning this and learning that.

“We are also going to come to each community and engage 50 parents, both fathers and mothers, it’s not only mothers, it’s not only fathers, parents and guardians. We know that parenting is not about one person, it’s either a father or a mother or both.

“So 50 of them in each community. So we’ll engage them, talk to them about the project, let them understand why it’s going to benefit their girls and they are going to choose like a day that’s convenient for them to release the girls to come to the location that we’ll be having the meeting and then we’ll be having the meeting with the girls every month. Then we are going to have 25 girls in each community, where we are going to train them for one year.

“We’ll be training them; we’ll first have like a three days fellowship boot camp for these 25 girls. So in, like I said, you see we have three communities, so 25 from each community.

“So these 75 girls in total will now have like a three days boot camp for them, where we’ll give them extensive training on skills, knowledge, and information that they need to make information about their health, about problem solving, about leadership, about mental health, mentorship, and career development.

“We are going to give them like an extensive three days training and after that training, we’ll be engaging them once every month throughout the year process, where they are going to think about a project that they are going to do within their community and implement that project by themselves.

“So it’s going to be like a girl-centered project that they’ll be doing within their community. We will just be at the back end, supporting them, they’ll come, they’ll tell us that in our community, we think that we need BOHO in our community.

“We are going to mentor them through that process of implementing the project, mentor them through the process of career development, mentor them for the period of one year, we are going to be engaging the girls. 75 girls across three communities. Then we’re also going to be having community safe spaces,” she said.