Impact in Niger
Hilin Mu (“Our Space” in Hausa) was launched in Maradi, Niger in 2018 to enhance girls’ education and promote the delay of marriage, nurture the agency and voice of rural adolescent girls, and help them realize their fundamental human and reproductive rights. The Hilin Mu team, with programmatic and financial support from OASIS, established a local organization in 2020, Lumière des Filles et des Femmes (LFF, Light of Girls & Women). We provide safe space clubs to girls at risk for early marriage as well as mobilize families and influencers to change norms around girls education and early marriage. Hilin Mu safe spaces focus on the critical transition from primary to secondary school as it is often a time for school withdrawal and early marriage. Hilin Mu recruits girls in the last year of primary school to participate in safe spaces for two years. Over 10,000 girls have participated in safe space clubs.
In the 2019-2020 Hilin Mu Cohort…
Responding to needs of the high proportions of Nigérienne adolescents who are married and out of school, LFF also leads the Hasken Mata (Hausa for “Women’s Light”) safe spaces program. There, married adolescents build their development, life and vocational skills, networks and their ability to make their own decisions and advocate for themselves.
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“I share a lot of my knowledge with my two friends who have not been to school … For my two friends, I want to learn all the arguments through Hilin Mu to convince families like theirs to free their girls to get an education, to let them choose. They don’t know how to read or write; every day I advise them to convince their parents to let their younger sisters go to school.”
- Nana Nazifa Laouli, age 15