A practical guide: How to implement safe spaces for schoolgirls in the West African Sahel

This implementation guide offers a concise 15-step model for setting up mentored safe spaces that build literacy, life skills and peer connection from four organisations working across Nigeria and Niger.

This guide presents recommendations on safe spaces: mentored groups for adolescent girls in school that combine literacy and numeracy support with life skills and peer connection. The goal is to give girls more say over key decisions in their lives, especially staying in school and delaying marriage.

This guide is co-authored by four organisations with long track records running these programmes: the Centre for Girls' Education and Hallmark Leadership Initiative in Nigeria, and Lumière des Filles et des Femmes and Organizing to Advance Solutions in the Sahel in Niger.

It sets out a practical 15-step model covering the full life of a safe spaces programme. This includes defining goals and metrics, building staff and budget, and getting buy-in from education authorities and community leaders. It also covers adapting curricula, enrolling girls, training mentors, running sessions, and measuring impact through baseline and endline data.

The guide ends with a list of supporting resources, including sample curricula, consent forms, a child safeguarding policy, and a mentor training pack. It invites other organisations to adapt these tools for their own settings.

Learn more about the approach in these videos:

• How to Mentor in Safe Spaces
• Safe Spaces Overview

Key messages

• The guide sets out a practical 15 step model covering programme design, staffing, community buy-in, curriculum adaptation, mentor training, delivery, monitoring and results sharing for safe spaces for adolescent girls. It is co-authored by four organisations working in Nigeria and Niger, drawing on collectively decades of direct implementation experience.
• Community and religious leader buy-in, secured through structured dialogue and demonstrated data, is treated as a prerequisite before enrolling girls or launching sessions.
• Mentors are recruited primarily from among female teachers already at the school, selected for passion and willingness to work extra hours, and trained over a structured five day programme.
• The model recommends providing each girl with two years of safe spaces participation, followed by a closing community dialogue to share results and encourage local ownership.