Mission: HACEY focuses on health and youth leadership, and trains young people in leadership, peer-to- peer coaching, and program management. HACEY is dedicated to building the capacity of young people to run evidence-based programs, make informed decisions, conduct research, and disseminate evidence about the effectiveness of their work.

Focus Areas: Health

Program Overview:

• For HACEY, youth leadership means engaging young people at all levels and stages of programs, mainstreaming their involvement and avoiding tokenism. HACEY believes that building young peoples’ capacity, particularly in leadership, can directly improve the health of the youth and members of their communities. As such, young people lead and run HACEY’s youth programs, with professionals providing structured support as needed.
• Experienced adults facilitate HACEY’s training of trainers workshops in which young people learn to train their peers. HACEY’s leadership programs are based on practical, experiential learning. Youth are taught what leadership means, how to organize a classroom, designate a class leader, motivate young people to work, and sustain relationships built during sessions.
• HACEY has worked with over 70 schools to integrate youth leadership content into their classes as extracurricular activities or after school programs by building relationships with the Ministry of Education, Education District, school counselors, and teachers.
• HACEY also trains young people to be health promoters, community mobilizers, or project implementers in the communities in which it works. In this way, HACEY ensures that there is a prepared community of young people to support the program as soon as it starts, and who can take over and lead the program once HACEY’s direct involvement ends.
• HACEY keeps in touch with all young people who have passed through its programs, and HACEY’s offices are kept open for young people to visit, where they often ask for feedback, log onto the internet, use meeting rooms, read resources, or chat. These conversations sometimes transition to informal mentoring or support for alumni by HACEY staff.

Impacts:

• Through HACEY’s programs, over 1,000 young people have been directly trained to be project leaders, monitoring and evaluation officers, community mobilizers, and health promoters. These young beneficiaries are spread across 50 communities covering all geopolitical zones in Nigeria.
• For its programs, HACEY typically sets indicators for monitoring, as well as conducting baseline, midline, and endline evaluations. HACEY also conducts periodic qualitative follow up evaluations of its programs via surveys, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews to get a holistic view of programs’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Young people who have passed through HACEY’s programs have reported positive changes from their experience. They feel they have improved the way they formulate and articulate their opinions, make informed decisions, and implement their own activities or programs in their communities.
• HACEY’s beneficiaries have gone on to establish clubs in other schools, become trainers in HACEY’s programs, consult for other organizations, and start their own organizations. HACEY has found that young people are driven, and will go above and beyond to achieve the goals they have set.

Learn More: www.hacey.org