AGI is an afterschool educational enrichment program that improves girls’ core academic performance and provide opportunities for them to build trusting relationships and acquire critical life skills not currently offered in secondary education. The core components of AGI are designed to address parental concerns in regards to the costs of schooling. The mentored girls’ clubs (safe spaces) are led by female teachers from the girls’ own schools.

Out-of-school girls—girls who have never attended school or who have dropped out after just a few years of schooling—are often the most vulnerable girls in a community.  They often marry at a younger age, suffer from higher rates maternal mortality, and spend more time selling goods for their mothers outside the home and thus are more at risk for sexual harassment and abuse.  The objectives of the program are to delay marriage and thus increase the time available for the participants to: 1) gain the basic academic skills needed to gain admission to a formal government school; and/or 2) greatly enhance livelihoods related skills.

3 cohorts of 40 cascading mentors each are trained as they conduct a direct advocacy and media campaign for the elimination of senior secondary school fees and the improvement of literacy instruction in government primary schools. The training offers workshops in advocacy, radio production, media, and leadership skills, applied in planning and implementing the Girls Campaign for Quality Education. The cascading mentors put their learned skills into practice by leading the Girls for Quality Education media and advocacy campaign in Kaduna State with key local and state-level stakeholders as they work to improve educational access and quality for girls.

The program includes: 1) a bridge program offering accelerated academic instruction in science, math and English; 2) vocational counseling and practicums at local health facilities; 3) safe spaces to enhance critical life skills; 4) four month science immersion courses for girls accepted for admission to a health training institution; and 5) HTI capacity building to cultivate a rural female-friendly learning environment. G4H works towards sustainability from the start by using existing secondary school and health infrastructure, and feeding into government rural health worker employment schemes, addressing the acute shortage of female health workers in rural Northern Nigeria .

After the first part of the program focused on accelerated learning, girls who are interested and able to enter/re-enter government schooling are offered an additional year of academic support. Those who do not enroll in school are offered vocational training and apprenticeships in repairing gas-run generators or electronics, animal husbandry, micro businesses, etc. The curriculum and non-formal nature of the learning spaces greatly facilitates the student-centered teaching methods, including problem-solving, role-playing, singing, and games. Parental and community engagement and collaboration with Local Education Authorities and the headmasters are also key components of the program. In addition to overseeing the program, CGE serves as the Learning Hub for the project and is responsible for training, monitoring and evaluation, and facilitating a collective learning process with consortium partners, program beneficiaries, state and local government and the Ford Foundation to reflect on program successes and challenges and to adapt implementation design.

This program focuses on the transition from primary to junior secondary school as it is a critical time for school withdrawal and early marriage. Hilin Mu recruits girls in the last year of a primary school and organize safe spaces for them over the next two years. The overall goal of Hilin Mu is to promote the delay of marriage, nurture the agency and voice of rural adolescent girls, and help them realize their fundamental human and reproductive rights. Hilin Mu serves adolescent girls in in Hausa communities with the same language and culture as those served by CGE.

The curriculum is based on the Montessori method, found to be ideal for girls facing the challenges these young girls are encountering. The method uses mixed age learning circles and encourages discovery as students learn concepts from working with materials made out of natural, aesthetic materials in Nigeria rather than by direct instruction. We aim to have at least 90% of the participating girls enroll in primary school by the time they are of appropriate age. Our experience and research strongly suggest that if these girls can learn to read by the time they are ready for primary school, most parents will be willing to let their daughters enroll. 15 of CGE’s former graduates—who began with us at the age of 12 and who have now advanced to the Federal Teachers’ College—serve as the pre-kindergarten mentors in their communities. Griselda Kondo, a gifted teacher at The Berkeley School (formally Berkeley Montessori) is volunteering her time in extended visits to Nigeria to collaborate in the program designing and team training with the Montessori approach.