For our second annual stand during the 16 Days of Activism, we convened 104 educators, parents, advocates, and youth for a watch-and-sensitisation party, an expert panel, and the live work of 40 Outreach Youth & Adolescent Lab Fellows. This is what one day of refusing silence looked like.
The Power of Youth in Advocacy: Bridging Generations to Combat Gender-Based Violence
VAV25 paired a watch-and-sensitisation party with an expert panel on gender-based violence in Nigeria, held together by a 12-member volunteer team. An exhibition area turned the venue into a hub for networking and education, where partners and guests engaged directly with the resources on display, ours among them.
The day also celebrated creativity. We announced the winners of the Hand-to-Mind writing competition, with the top three awarded scholarship cash prizes and entrants placing fourth through tenth receiving consolation prizes, a deliberate signal that every young voice in the room counted.
And it was a recruiting moment. As the work of our 2025 Fellows took the spotlight, a steady stream of guests crossed to the exhibition desk to ask how to join the Fellowship and the volunteer network.
The day also drew the press: journalists from New Telegraph and Standard Times interviewed our founder, carrying the conversation on gender-based violence well beyond the hall.
A screening that opened honest conversation across generations in the room.
Practitioners shared lived and professional insight on GBV in Nigeria.
Top three won scholarship prizes; places 4-10 received consolation prizes.
Four external exhibitors plus TSO; a networking and learning hub for all.
The Fellowship is not theoretical. When the 2025 cohort presented their projects, the audience saw evidence of social change in motion, and a pipeline of young leaders ready to carry the work home.
Fellow-led projects reached 2,566 individuals across Oyo, Kogi, Cross River, Jigawa and Borno states.
young people applied to the 2025 Fellowship.
were selected into four advocacy clusters.
Between the annual gatherings, VAV Monthly kept the dialogue alive, marking the moments on the calendar that matter most to adolescent health and women's rights.
We opened the 2025 Fellowship and its four clusters, sexual grooming, FGM, period equity, and child marriage, with a keynote from Dr Enow A. G. Stevens on the role of education and digital tools in culturally relevant sex education.
A virtual discussion on intersectional advocacy, why women in rural and urban Nigeria face different barriers, and why inclusive solutions have to be built for both.
Guest speaker Ethel Oseghale Attah made the case for body literacy as empowerment, and named the cost of family silence: young people forced to learn about their own bodies from unreliable sources.
Our menstrual equity cluster took apart the myths and taboos around periods, and pushed past one-time pad donations toward sustainable solutions: education, reusable pads, clean water, and policy.
We used our platform to challenge harmful traditional practices, FGM, child marriage, widowhood rites, and cross-generational relationships, and to bring those conversations into public space.
Four Fellows, one per cluster, shared practical strategies for young people to drive change at home, moderated by Communications Associate Sophia Onovo.
Advocates and a legal practitioner made the case that communities should prioritise behavioural change over reconciliation, because silence protects abusers and isolates survivors.
Ninety per cent of participants were extremely satisfied. The remaining ten per cent told us where to build better, and we are listening.
"Involve more men in these conversations. There should have been a man on the panel as well, it felt like women speaking to women."
- A VAV25 participant, in our post-event feedback
Future editions will seat men as active partners in the dialogue, not an audience to it. GBV is everyone's work.
Participants with disabilities were present without a sign-language interpreter arranged. Inclusive provision becomes standard, not an afterthought.
From registration set-up to exhibitor space, we are tightening the run-of-show so the first guest meets the same calm as the last.
We made a clear promise to our community to keep these conversations going beyond the event. Here is where the work continues, and where you can read it for yourself.
A full account of the Outreach Youth & Adolescent Lab cohort's year, project by project, state by state, so the impact is documented, not just remembered.
Read it →The networkThe people who carry the work into the field, Fellows, Coordinators, Champions, Delegates, and volunteers, gathered under one delivery network.
Explore A.G.E.N.C.Y →Coming 2026The women leading the next chapter of Voices Against Violence, our annual platform for women's empowerment, advocacy, and the VAV magazine.
Meet them →The full pictureEverything we built across the year, every programme, every state, every number, gathered in one place.
Read the annual report →Whether you have a Saturday, a school, an organisation, or a platform, there is a place for you in this work.