Quiet Shelter Empowerment Foundation
Combatting Gender-Based Violence Through Sexuality Education
A Three-year impact assessment of adolescent-focused GBV prevention across Adamawa State, Northeast Nigeria.
Cumulative Reach
In-School Students Reached
Secondary Schools
Youth & Women Empowered
Executive Summary
Three Years at the Intersection of Safety & Education
Over Three years, the Quiet Shelter Empowerment Foundation has built a robust, localised model for delivering comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and GBV prevention strategies in conflict-affected Northeast Nigeria.
School-based interventions have reached over 2,500 in-school adolescents across 13 secondary schools, while broader community-led protection frameworks have empowered more than 3,000 youth and women.
This report synthesises historical performance data, establishes empirical benchmarks, and outlines the strategic roadmap to expand to 25 schools while transitioning into rigorous implementation research.
M&E Outcome Data
Evidence of Effectiveness
GBV Awareness & Abuse Recognition
+55%Students can accurately identify non-physical forms of abuse including psychological coercion and structural denial of education.
Consent Literacy & Bodily Autonomy
+59%Driven by contextualised, interactive peer-led drama and teaching sessions — the most dramatic transformation observed.
Confidence in Help-Seeking
+45%Students feel equipped and secure to report threats to trained School-based GBV teams, up from prior silence due to fear.
Key Insights
Deconstructing Harmful Norms
At baseline, only 34% of students could identify non-physical abuse. By endline, this rose sharply to 89% — demonstrating that structured CSE fundamentally reshapes how young people recognise harm.
Consent Mastery
Consent literacy climbed from 22% to 81%, the most dramatic outcome recorded. Contextualised peer-led drama and interactive sessions proved especially effective in this cultural context.
Breaking the Silence
86% of students felt equipped to report threats to school-based GBV teams, compared to 41% at baseline who said they would suffer in silence due to fear of stigma or reprisal.
Evidence Limitations
The Gap We Have Not Yet Closed
Current monitoring conclusively proves that the curriculum shifts safety knowledge and trust. However, no measurement has yet been taken of how safety interventions affect foundational learning trajectories — literacy and numeracy. In Adamawa State and Nigeria more broadly, cognitive performance and physical safety are treated as completely distinct goals by funders. Closing this empirical gap is the core objective of the next project phase.
Next Phase
Implementation Research & Scale
A quasi-experimental trial in partnership with the American University of Nigeria and the Adamawa State Ministry of Education will map safety data against standardised foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) metrics aligned with SDG 4.1.
The goal: generate hard empirical proof that state decision-makers can use to determine whether, how and at what cost gender-responsive learning support should be integrated into the formal education system.