Meet Jennifer, the lady with a passion to empower African girls

She is 21. But, to her, age is just a number.
She doesn’t allow that to distract her from her goal.
While her age mates are busy thinking of how to survive in the murky waters of Nigeria’s social and educational struggles, Jennifer Umeh, a student of Federal Polytechnic, Offa, Kwara State, is not only thinking about her future but that of thousands of African girls as well.
Today, the Anambra State-born activist has a passion drawn from a workshop she attended in December, 2015.
Since then, she has not looked back in her determination to ensure that no African girl, starting from Nigeria, suffers.
In less than a year, she has mentored and empowered over 1,000 young girls in Nigeria.
Her passion has taken her to schools in Kwara, Enugu, Anambra, Lagos, Rivers, Abuja, Ogun, Abia, Ebonyi and Imo states.
Jennifer’s inspiration started after she attended the ‘Educate a Girl Nigeria’ workshop in Lagos.
It was an eye-opener to her as she became aware of too many social crises affecting the girl-child around the world.
She saw the need to help young girls and the desire for them to speak out so that their voices could be heard.
Immediately, she approached some organisations, indicating her interest to serve as a volunteer.
The request was granted and she joined Her Voice Africa, YALI Network, One African Child, Earthplus, AREAi, She is a Model International and others.
Because of her zeal to do more than the task given to her, on January 1, 2016, she founded the Hope for African Girls Initiative (HAGi) and since then, it has become a household name in educational humanitarian activities.
Jennifer said she founded HAGi “to educate girls to be empowered enough to stand up for themselves and to discover their self-identity through quality education and
empowerment”.
To make the impact felt, she has attended many workshops and seminars, in Nigeria and abroad, telling stakeholders to help African youths.
A Campus Correspondent with a Nigerian newspaper, The Nation, and a Fellow of ‘Mentor a Girl Child’, she is currently a member of African Liberty Organisation for Development (ALOD) and a Youth Ambassador for Earthplus.
Jennifer has been able to develop her leadership competence by seizing other training and volunteer opportunities that
allow for young people to be co-learners and well as active contributors to the development of their community.
As a teenager, Jennifer started her passion by visiting Motherless Babies Homes in her community and taking out time to play and educate children, giving special attention to the girls without money or financial assistance.
She shared with them the knowledge of what she was thought at the workshop that inspired her.
She said: “It felt so beautiful to see them smiling, not letting me go home. It was wonderful to teach what they would not learn even at school”.
Jennifer inspired many of her friends with most of her Facebook posts and her passion for girls and was able to attract other youths to support her project.
With her friends and supporters, they are supporting community-based schools in Africa and their literacy effort is playing an instrumental role in ensuring that young African girls have access to education.
“It is an investment that will give dividend to generations unborn”, she said.
She advised others to ensure that they contribute to the development of African girl-child.
“You must not wait until you become affluent before you impact people. Successful people always focus on the positive side, even when they know challenges are inevitable. Start with small steps. I did not magically start mentoring young girls all at once. I started with trainings and conferences. But that is not even strictly a requirement to get engaged. Helping a less fortunate individual by sharing your food or your time is a good start. Also, volunteering in outreach programmes and participating or joining in school and community-based organisations could help”, she said.