Mairo's Program
Mairo founded the Adolescent Health and Information Projects (AHIP) in 1989, originally a youth-based club in Kano, Nigeria, that organized recreational activities for youth.
But by 1992, the non-governmental, non-partisan, non-profit organization had re-organized to better handle a mission that had expanded greatly during the intervening years.
Today, AHIP manages four, multi-trade vocational centers in northern Nigeria, providing skills and training to economically and educationally disadvantaged youth. AHIP partners with national and international development agencies, state and local governments, and community-based organizations on research and education.
AHIP's goal: to provide young people with the information and communications skills they need so they can better adapt to life changes, and become healthy, positive, productive adults, partners, and parents.
Mairo
age unknown in nigeria
“As an abused youth, I know the practical definition of ‘suffer,’ not just the theory or the dictionary definition.
Each time a child narrates her story of suffering I relate to it because I have walked through a similar lane.
I was asked to get married. But I was never a child bride, because the relations I grew up with did not believe that I was good enough to be one. They would have to spend good money to get me lots of stuff as bride wealth to be taken to the would-be husband’s house, which they were not ready to do. So that saved me.
I would watch other little girls that were given out in marriage suffer. I was secretly happy that I was denied getting married. And I then swore never to get married like my friends and was ready to run away if ever I was asked to get married again. Luckily, I was spared.
The older I got, the more I started thinking about human rights, freedom and dignity. I founded a youth-focused organization to work with young people, and the work evolved until it included married adolescents.
I believe that young people should be allowed to marry when they are fully matured—that is physically and psychologically, so that they can take charge of their lives properly, make their own decisions, and live in partnership.”